


Last to Know

by paintedrecs



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Atlas Captain Shiro, Canon compliant through season 7, Colleen/Sam Holt, Established Hunk/Shay (Voltron), Excessive Pining, Flashbacks, Friends to Lovers, Grieving, Keith (Voltron) Has Abandonment Issues, M/M, Minor Allura/Lance (Voltron), Minor one-sided Acxa/Keith, POV Keith (Voltron), Past Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Pre-Kerberos Mission, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Slow Burn, Underage Drinking, Voltron Leader Keith, communication is important, the wolf still hasn't told Keith his name
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 13:16:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 39,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16285277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedrecs/pseuds/paintedrecs
Summary: It took a while for Keith to identify the feeling that rushed through his chest every time he saw Shiro: when Shiro caught his eye from the opposite end of the mess hall, when Keith saw him smiling in groups of other junior officers, when any of the cadets spoke Shiro’s name with a reverence that proved they didn’t know anything beyond the poster boy’s glowing reputation.Happiness.If this was what friendship felt like, Keith was finally starting to understand why everyone made such a big deal out of it.***When Keith first met Shiro, he had no idea how dramatically his life was about to change—or how crucial Shiro would become to every aspect of it....Shiro, whowouldn't stop dying.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first VLD fic I've written, so I'm excited/nervous to post it! It began with a very simple idea (why did Shiro switch Lions during the Season 7 roadtrip?) and was intended to only be about 3-5k. I decided that I needed to dig back farther...which took me all the way back to the Garrison before I was able to travel the universe alongside Keith, Shiro, and the rest of the paladins.
> 
> So I hope you enjoy this canon compliant exploration of Keith's developing feelings—and of a deep-rooted friendship that was destined to become so much more.

No matter what he tried, Keith couldn’t seem to get rid of Shiro.

It was a situation he’d never run into before. Ordinarily, it took little effort—or none at all—for people to exit Keith’s life.

There was his mom, of course, who’d left before Keith was old enough to remember anything about her. Most of the others at the Home could, when pressed, pull up fragments of memories. A soft melody. The brush of a cool hand over a feverish forehead. A tight, sugary-scented hug and loving promises that may not have panned out, but had at least existed at some point in a happier past.

Keith had none of that. He tried, sometimes, to imagine his own versions of their stories. What his mom’s voice might’ve sounded like. If she’d been a good cook, or the type of person who ordered take-out for every meal. He’d peer into the mirror and wonder if her eyes were shaped like his, if he’d gotten his sharp chin or unruly hair from her, or maybe that fiery temper that he never seemed to be able to hold back when it counted.

He’d stored up those questions, and dozens like them, for the day his pop had promised would come once he was old enough to understand the answers.

Keith wasn’t sure how old that was supposed to be. Ten? Twelve? Or was his pop just waiting for him to get tired of asking?

It hadn’t mattered, in the end. One night, shortly before Keith’s tenth birthday, his pop hadn’t come home. Keith hadn’t worried about it too much at first; sometimes work went late. It wasn’t like fires could be tied down to a firm schedule, and it wouldn’t have been Keith’s first experience making his own dinner, putting himself to bed, and finding his pop—still smelling faintly of smoke—scrubbing tiredly at his eyes and poking at the coffee pot the next morning.

Except that morning, his pop wasn’t there. Not in the kitchen, or in the bathroom, or even passed out on the couch, too exhausted to make it to his bed. He still hadn’t come home by the time Keith had scraped butter over a too-dark slice of toast, dressed himself, and walked to the bus stop, barely catching it in time to make it to school.

No one even thought to call the school until halfway through the day, right about the time that Keith’s grumbling stomach reminded him that he hadn’t packed a lunch.

It turned out that his pop wouldn’t be coming home. Not that night. Not ever. And home, according to the tired-looking woman introduced by the principal, would mean something different for Keith from then on.

***

Voices filtered through the glass wall at Keith’s back—muffled, but clear enough to flood the edges of his vision with red-tinged panic. He clenched his hands into fists to stop them from trembling—whether with anger or regret, he wasn’t sure yet. There was no point to any of it. It was probably too late for apologies to make a difference, but why fight to stay at the Garrison, anyway, when nobody wanted him there?

When the door slid open, he dug his nails into his palms to steady himself. Somehow it was worse waiting to hear the rejection from Shiro, instead of sitting through a lecture by one of the officers who actually had the power to send him away. None of them mattered to Keith; he’d known since the moment he’d signed his name on the enrollment forms that no one here would be a part of his future.

But Shiro...for some reason, it mattered what Shiro thought of him.

It had since the day they’d met, when Shiro had insisted he take his turn with the simulator, when the warmth of his smile had somehow felt linked to the way the controls had come to life under Keith’s hands. It was a snap of connection, the first time in years that something had felt _right_. Like Keith had, without being aware of it, been searching for this moment.

And now he’d lost this, too. The flight training; the enthusiastic conversations about books and past missions; Shiro’s hand resting on his shoulder, grounding him whenever he felt like he’d started to come untethered.

 _I didn’t want to be here anyway_. It was enough of a lie that he couldn’t say it outright, but he did his best to convey it with a defiant tilt of his chin, hoping the shakiness in his voice passed for lingering rage.

He was so busy steeling himself for Shiro’s disappointment— _I made a mistake going out on a limb for you; I should’ve listened to everyone’s warnings; why didn’t I write you off the minute you stole my car?—_ that it took a moment for the actual words to filter through. Keith felt his mouth dropping open, unable to keep the surprise off his face.

Shiro, his eyes shining with that same unwavering kindness, was reaching a hand out to him again, telling him he wasn’t going anywhere.

That should’ve been the end of it. Keith should’ve simply taken Shiro’s hand and counted his blessings, keeping his head down from then on, flying Iverson’s drills without complaint and letting snide comments roll off his back, pretending that none of them were true enough to sting.

Something bitter surged through his veins, instead. It was the same impulse that had catapulted him out of the simulator, hearing failure crash across the screen as he flung himself into the car sitting outside, its keys carelessly left in the ignition. He’d gunned it down the road with the full knowledge that he was destroying any opportunities he might’ve had as a pilot, as _anything_ that could steer him out of the dead-end path his life had become.

He didn’t understand _why_ Shiro wasn’t leaving. Why he hadn’t then, why he wasn’t now, when Keith was giving him every possible excuse to walk away.

“I don’t get it,” he said, as he let Shiro pull him to his feet, his palm warm and broad under Keith’s too-tight grip. “I haven’t even said I’m sorry for punching him.”

“Are you sorry?” Shiro asked.

“No,” Keith said.

The corner of Shiro’s mouth twitched, a quick there-and-gone movement at odds with the concern in his dark grey eyes. “Then let’s get out of here before they think to ask you.” He squeezed Keith’s hand, leaving the unfamiliar sensation behind as he let go.

It took Keith a few seconds—and Shiro turning around to arch an eyebrow at him—to get that he was supposed to be following. He fell in at Shiro’s side, matching his steps to Shiro’s long, easy strides. He was too close, he realized halfway down the corridor, flushing when his hand bumped against Shiro’s, their knuckles brushing.

He shoved his hands in his pockets, straightening his back to make himself seem taller, like he was the kind of guy who made sense next to Shiro. Like he wasn’t some antisocial cadet a head shorter than everyone else in his class, who still hadn’t hit the growth spurt his pop had promised was on its way. It’d been six years and fewer inches since he’d last heard that; Keith was starting to think this might be as good as it got.

They were heading toward the first-year barracks—at least, Keith assumed that was their destination, until Shiro paused at a junction and nodded at the left fork. “This way,” he said. “Have you been to the vehicle bays?”

Keith rubbed his thumb against the edge of the card in his pocket, a habit he’d picked up early on in his time at the Garrison. It was a reminder of where he could’ve ended up if Shiro hadn’t bailed him out. Of where he might find himself the next time he screwed up, once Shiro got tired of covering for him, of insisting that he saw some good in him that Keith wasn’t sure actually existed.

“Not yet,” Keith said. “I don’t think they leave their keys lying around like you do.”

Shiro grinned at him, a brilliant flash of his teeth that made Keith duck his head and pull his mouth into a frown, attempting to hide the sudden, inexplicable hammering in his chest. He’d never felt like this before—never wanted to search through the words swirling around in his brain to find more that would make Shiro smile at him like that again.

“Believe me, I got a lecture from Iverson about that. But I wasn’t thinking about the cars. C’mon, I’ll show you.”

Sure enough, they walked past a long bank of garages, Shiro exchanging greetings with a few people along the way but not stopping. When they reached a mostly deserted hangar, he swiped his badge and waved for Keith to go in.

“Hoverbikes,” Keith said, touching the sleek side of one before thinking to ask if he was allowed. “My pop—” He cut the memory off mid-sentence. That wasn’t a topic he brought up. Not ever.

As the hangar doors were sliding shut behind them, Shiro flipped a switch that lit up the room, revealing gleaming rows of bikes painted in the Garrison’s colors. “You had one of these when you were younger? I figured you must’ve had some experience.”

Keith shook his head. “My pop never let me fly his.” Another _when you’re older_ promise that hadn’t been kept. He’d thought about it, when they’d taken him back and given him a bag and half an hour to pack his things. He’d locked his bedroom door, stuck his mom’s knife in his belt, and spent the next twenty-eight minutes deciding whether to climb out the window and take the bike.

If he’d been a couple years older, he probably would’ve done it. But he’d known the odds of lasting more than a few days on his own in the desert.

“Technically, cadets don’t get access to these until at least their second year.” Shiro flicked a set of keys through his fingers, absently, as though he wasn’t aware of Keith watching him.

“So this is supposed to be some sort of motivation to get me to stay?” If he didn’t fight anyone else for the next year, if he settled down and picked up another stripe on his shoulder, he could look forward to logging carefully regulated flight time with hoverbikes? Keith felt his lips twist at the idea.

“No. That’s me telling you that when we take these out, you probably shouldn’t advertise it.”

Keith jerked his head up in surprise. Shiro didn’t sound like he was joking. It could’ve been some sort of a trick—a test to mark that final strike on his record that they needed to kick him out for good. But Keith couldn’t entertain that possibility for long. Shiro wasn’t that kind of person.

“No one asked why you hit Griffin,” Shiro said. “You don’t have to tell me. That’s not what this is. But if you ever want to talk to someone—off the record, as little judgment as I can manage—I’m here, Keith.”

Keith nodded after a bit, acknowledging the offer, and Shiro pocketed his keys, kicking a toolkit out from under the bike.

“We’re not flying them today?” Keith couldn’t quite keep the disappointment out of his voice.

Shiro laughed. “I think we’ve gotta wait until things settle down a little before we start breaking more rules. Besides, the engine’s been catching on this one. Help me figure out what’s wrong with it?”

They worked steadily for a while, Keith handing Shiro tools, and Shiro explaining every step of what he was doing.

Keith traded out one wrench for another that looked remarkably similar and sat back on his heels. “The Garrison doesn’t have mechanics for this?”

“They do,” Shiro said, grunting as he yanked at a stubborn bolt. “I figure if you’re out in the desert, or halfway to Jupiter, without an engineer on hand, it’s a good idea to know as much as possible about how your machines work. Here. I think that might’ve done it.”

He slid out from underneath the hoverbike, wiping his greasy hands on a rag and tossing it back to Keith. Flinging one leg over the bike to straddle it, he cranked the ignition on, tilting his head to listen to the roar of the engine coming to life, then the smoother rumble as it idled.

“Is that how it’s supposed to sound?”

“More or less,” Shiro said, shutting it off again and sliding back down to the floor to help Keith finish packing away the tools. “Can’t tell for sure until I put it through its paces. What’re your classes like on Tuesday? You finish at 1400 hours?”

“1600,” Keith said. “Astronomy’s Tuesdays and Thursdays.” And, despite the lure of flying with Shiro, he was actually interested in that class, now that he had instructors who were experts in the fields he’d spent his childhood reading about.

“Meet me here at 1700 hours, then. After you’ve eaten. We’ll take this guy out together the first time and work our way up to solo flights. Deal?”

He reached his hand out, but Keith hesitated before shaking on it.

“I don’t—” Keith huffed out a harsh, frustrated breath. “Why are you doing this?” 

“I told you,” Shiro said, like all this was as natural as breathing to him.

“I’ve _had_ my second chance,” Keith insisted. “I’ve gotta be on my fifth or sixth by now. Your car. Griffin. That other guy last week. I cut four classes in my first month here. I mess up flight patterns when I get bored, which happens _all the time_ because we’re stuck with virtual training wheels. I—”

“Keith,” Shiro said. Keith stopped and looked up at him, at the softness in his eyes.

That sympathy should’ve made Keith close off more. It’d always made him angry during forced therapy sessions, when people who didn’t know anything about his life sat him down and tried to get him to explain his feelings, then wrote him off as a discipline case when he couldn’t.

He yanked his gaze away and scrubbed the rag over a stain on the floor, giving his hands something to do. “He said something about my parents. Today. That’s why I hit him. But the rest of the time—that’s just me. I’m a screw up. Everyone knows it. You’re the only one who doesn’t seem to get that.”

“I don’t have access to your files,” Shiro said. “I wouldn’t go digging around in them even if I did. I’ve heard things, though; it’s hard not to.”

Keith straightened the rag out, ripping it slightly in the process. “Like what.”

“I’m not saying I believe all of it. But from what you’re telling me, I’m guessing at least some is probably true. You’ve been in fights before?”

Keith nodded—a quick jerk of his head.

“Is it usually digs about your parents?”

“Sometimes,” Keith said. “Not everybody at school’s cool with orphans. Makes them uncomfortable.”

Shiro didn’t say anything, simply watching as Keith awkwardly folded the rag and shoved it back into the box, slapping its lid into place.

He slid his thumb into his pocket, just far enough to touch the card’s smooth surface, letting himself picture the shape of the Garrison logo, the way he’d felt when Shiro had handed it to him, then driven off a little too fast, gravel spitting beneath the tires.

“It wasn’t always what they said _to_ me. A lot of the times, they were talking to each other, where I could hear them.”

“So it’d be your fault if you reacted.”

“It’s always been my fault,” Keith said. “Most of it didn’t matter, and I knew that, but I couldn’t stop myself.” It made him _angry_. He’d lash out, his vision going red and hazy, his ears buzzing, unable or maybe just unwilling to calm down.

“And no one listened when you told them what was going on?” Shiro waited through a few beats of silence, then concluded, “You never tried to tell them.”

Keith shrugged. Who’d believe him? And anyway, it was always something stupid, empty words that he shouldn’t have let burrow under his skin. “A group of them would do this thing. _YORF_.” He hacked it out, imitating the way the other guys would mime emptying their stomachs over his lunch as he sat in a corner of the cafeteria, trying to keep his nose buried in a book, his thoughts fleeing a million miles away from all of them. “That’s where I grew up. The Youth Rehabilitation Facility.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Shiro said. “It’s not a great name.”

Keith snorted. “It’s a fancy way of hiding that it’s an orphanage. For misfits—the ones nobody wants.” He let go of the card, flattening his hand against the cool concrete. “I wasn’t there the whole time. I was little enough, at first, that they tried sending me out into foster homes. Never lasted long.”

Shiro drew the toolbox toward him, methodically snapping its latches into the locked position. “So what’s your plan? Convince everyone here to send you back, then what? Wait until you age out?”

“It’s only a couple more years,” Keith said. He knew the exact number of days; he’d been counting since he was thirteen, since the YRF matron had told him, with a disapproving frown and a red stamp in his folder, that he wouldn’t be meeting more foster parents.

“You won’t be able to come back to the Garrison. You might find other ways to get up in the sky—private companies, maybe. It won’t be the same. Our ships aren’t like anything else you’ll find.”

“I know that,” Keith said.

Shiro set the toolbox back under the hoverbike, then rubbed his hands briefly over the thighs of his dark uniform pants, a restless movement that signaled he was probably just about done with this conversation. It’d taken longer than Keith had expected; he scraped his nails against the concrete, doing his best to keep the disappointment from rising into his throat. This was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? For Shiro to see what he was really like. To give up on him, like everyone else.

“Maybe you think you’re not good enough,” Shiro said, his voice calm, matter-of-fact. “You’re afraid of seeing what happens when the Garrison pushes you to your limits, shows that you don’t have the stamina to keep your flight scores at the top of the class.”

Anger spiked in Keith’s veins. He was on his feet before he was even conscious of moving, towering over Shiro for once. “I’m better at this than anyone else here,” he hissed, fierce pride ripping the response out of him.

Shiro grinned up at him. “I know you are.”

Keith blinked, his brow furrowing, the fury draining out of him as fast as it’d hit.

“Sorry,” Shiro said. “I wanted to see if you believed it. If you’re gonna fight for something, Keith, do it when it matters, and go about it the right way. Fight for yourself, for your spot here. You’ve earned it. You need to remember that, or no one else will. Trust me, you’re gonna hit a lot of jealousy over the next few years when you start shooting past the kinds of records we both know you’re capable of.”

“Like your records?” Keith challenged.

“Probably,” Shiro said, rising easily to his feet, tall, confident, and somehow not bothered at all by the idea of Keith knocking his scores off the leaderboards. “I know a lot about how tough it is to be the one everyone’s watching. They don’t say it, but most of them are waiting for you to fail.”

Keith frowned. “So why’re you helping me?”

“Because I see everything about you transform when you’re flying. You love it, Keith. You were born for this.” Shiro held his gaze with a certainty that Keith felt seeping into his bones, strengthening him in a way he’d never thought possible. “And because I know how lonely it can be at the top. You’re the best pilot here. So was I. When I’m flying the way I’m meant to, it can feel like there’s no one else in the universe.”

“Doesn’t sound like a bad thing to me.” Honestly, it sounded perfect: the kind of scenario Keith had dreamed about, stifled by all those long nights trapped at the Home, desperate to find a way to breathe freely again, to escape from the constant press of _people_ teeming around him.

Shiro chuckled. “Yeah, sometimes it’s great. But sometimes, you need to know that there’s someone out there to catch you if you fall.”

Keith broke eye contact and scuffed his boot across the floor, pretty sure he could see where this was going. “You’re telling me to make nice with the others so I have some friends here.”

“You’ve got my friendship, if you want it,” Shiro said. “Beyond that, it’s up to you.”

He swiped them out of the hangar, not seeming to expect Keith to respond—which was good, since Keith’s mind was drawing a complete blank.

It probably should’ve been an obvious conclusion to reach—this was what friends did, right? Spent time together. Talked. Made plans to hang out again. Keith had no idea; it was all new to him.

“What about you?” he asked after watching another round of Shiro’s friendly but distant interactions with those they passed on their way back into the main building.

He’d assumed a lot of things about Shiro. Even though Keith had never been one to pay attention to gossip, everyone at school had heard about the Garrison’s Golden Boy. Handsome, young, popular, the kind of guy you’d plaster all over your recruitment brochures, but with the talent to back it up. The kind of guy everyone would want to befriend. Keith was starting to get the impression that wasn’t the full picture.

Shiro gave him a puzzled look, waiting for the rest of the question.

“You said it was lonely,” Keith clarified. “How’d you get through it? Who was there to catch you?”

Shiro’s smile went soft, private, in a way Keith didn’t know how to read. “I got lucky,” he said. “Adam was my flight partner. I was untouchable, kinda like you. When I was up there, focused on the horizon, getting lost in the... _exhilaration_ of it all, everything else around me seemed to fade away. No one could reach me. He was the only one who ever came close.”

They’d reached the junction again; this time Shiro stopped, ready to part ways. Keith couldn’t help lingering, just for a minute longer.

“Tuesday?” he said.

Shiro’s lips turned up at the corners, his eyes sparkling with an excitement that Keith felt reverberating through his chest. “Bring a jacket. These bikes are different from civilian ones; when the wind’s whipping past, when we’re flying right—it’ll take your breath away.”

***

Things got easier after that. Not with the Garrison as a whole: the classroom exercises stayed as boring as ever, few of the cadets made attempts to talk to him, and Keith frequently had to struggle to tamp down on his temper before it flared out of control.

But Shiro was there.

Their flights together were a highlight of Keith’s weeks; Shiro was right about the adrenaline rush, the pure _joy_ of feeling a machine that powerful respond to the slightest twist of the controls, to the tilt of his body. They had a few near misses, early on. The first time, after Keith had narrowly avoided crashing into the side of a craggy outcrop about five miles outside of the Garrison, he’d yanked off his goggles, his hands sweating, unable to come up with any valid defenses. Surely Shiro would decide what they were doing was too dangerous, that they’d need to stop, or at least slow down for a while.

When Keith had finally dared to look over at Shiro’s hoverbike, pulled up next to his with far more finesse, Shiro was laughing.

“Okay, we need to work on your turning radius,” he said, his face lit by pure delight that was almost painful to witness. “But your _speed_ , wow, it took me months to feel comfortable pushing my bike that hard. Let’s stick to some flatland racing for the next few weeks while we sort this out, yeah?”

Everything with Shiro was easier than it should’ve been. It was comfortable. Uncomplicated. Keith forgot to keep his guard up around him; they were silent for long stretches, only dipping into serious territory when the occasion called for it, mostly content to exist in each other’s orbit like they’d known each other their entire lives.

It took a while for Keith to identify the feeling that rushed through his chest every time he saw Shiro: when Shiro caught his eye from the opposite end of the mess hall, when Keith saw him smiling in groups of other junior officers, when any of the cadets spoke Shiro’s name with a reverence that proved they didn’t know anything beyond the poster boy’s glowing reputation.

 _Happiness_.

If this was what friendship felt like, Keith was finally starting to understand why everyone made such a big deal out of it.

A little over halfway through the spring semester, Shiro found Keith in a back corner of the Garrison library, in a remote study carrel that hadn’t taken Keith long to claim as his own. It was squeezed between a row of dusty bookcases and a tiny window, which Keith liked; if he pressed his face against the glass and squinted into the distance, he could glimpse slivers of the desert past the Garrison walls. It was also situated over a vent that sputtered out fitful blasts of too-cold air, and one of the legs was shorter than the others, giving the desk an irritating tilt that made anything you set on its surface slowly, inevitably, slide to the floor.

Keith had chosen this location specifically for its inhospitable atmosphere. No one usually came near it, except in the last couple of days before finals, when everyone was panicking and cramming too hard to pay attention to him, anyway.

Shiro dragged an extra chair over with a series of carpet-scraping thumps that announced his presence well in advance.

“Studying?” Shiro asked, once he was close enough. There was no need to whisper; it was getting late in the evening, and most people were probably heading back to their bunks or still making use of their weekend passes to explore the neighboring town. Keith had heard something about a fair. Bright lights, fast rides. A lot of loud crowds, burnt popcorn, fried snacks. Not something that had sparked his interest.

“No,” he said, shutting the book he’d been staring at while thinking of other things. “What’s up? I thought you said you were going to a movie.”

“Tomorrow,” Shiro said, scooting his chair until it bumped into the side of the desk, then swinging his bag into his lap. “Adam’s working tonight. Actually, that’s why I’m here—it was his birthday last week, and it made me think. We must’ve missed celebrating yours. So here, I got you something.”

He drew a slightly dented white pastry box out of his bag and set it on the desk, grinning at Keith until Keith picked off the piece of tape holding it shut. Inside was a misshapen object that looked like it’d been scraped out of a cake tin. It smelled of chocolate, had thick, lumpy frosting, and a clump of waxy candles careening unsteadily into the deep canyon cutting across it.

“It split. When it was baking. Probably still tastes okay, though.” Shiro rubbed his thumb over the pulse point on his wrist, a habit that typically came out when he was nervous, deep in thought, or excited about something. Judging from the sweet tooth he tried to pretend he didn’t have and the fact that he was nearly vibrating in his chair, Keith was guessing this situation fit into the third category.

“My birthday was back in October,” Keith said. “But...thanks.” It smelled a little better than it looked, at least.

“You should’ve said. I’ll remember next time.” Shiro poked a finger into the frosting, licked it clean, then made a face. “And I’ll use a different recipe. Or figure out what went wrong with this one.”

“Give me a fork,” Keith said, and dug into the mess, doggedly making it through a good fourth of the weirdly-textured cake before Shiro pulled the box away from him, laughing in protest.

“I know it’s not great. But you don’t really like _things_ , so I wasn’t sure what else to get you.”

“You didn’t have to give me anything, Shiro,” Keith said, softer than he’d intended. This was more than enough. Shiro even thinking about his birthday—wanting to celebrate it with him. Being here, on an evening Keith had been fully prepared to spend alone.

Shiro rubbed at his wrist again, then dropped his hand, along with whatever follow up comment he’d clearly been thinking his way through. “Tell me what you’re reading,” he said instead.

Keith flipped the book back open to show him. Shiro squeezed in closer and ducked his head down to frown intently at an out-of-date passage that Keith had scratched through in irritation, and Keith lost track of the half-formed, bittersweet thoughts brought to life by the cake and the absurdly belated birthday wishes.

“I think that’s your phone,” Keith said an indiscernible amount of time later. They’d abandoned the book as a lost cause— _I have a better one on my shelf, remind me to bring it next time I see you,_ Shiro had said before slapping the cover shut—but Shiro hadn’t shown any indication he needed to be on his way. He’d simply settled back in his chair, looking relaxed and comfortable, like he had nowhere better to be on a Saturday evening than an empty library, shooting the breeze with Keith.

Shiro paused mid-story—he’d been giving an animated account of how Iverson had lost his eye—one of the three variations he knew, anyway—to grope for his bag, which had wound up somewhere under the desk and, apparently, with one of the straps partially tangled around a leg of his chair.

“Oh wow, it’s later than I’d realized,” he said. He tapped at the screen, a line between his eyebrows creasing in concentration.

“You’ve gotta go?” Keith asked, masking his disappointment by starting to shuffle his own belongings into place.

“Hm,” Shiro said, sending another set of messages before focusing back on Keith. “Yeah, Adam’s done. I’m gonna swing by and meet him at the front desk.”

“The front desk of—wait, he works here? In the library?” Keith asked. He’d seen Adam often enough, but usually from a distance, with Shiro and the rest of their cohort. Keith had never really paid attention to the library staff—they stayed out of his way, and he did the same—but he searched through his memory now, trying to think if he’d ever noticed Adam here. He probably wouldn’t have registered him without Shiro’s glowing presence at his side, his radiant smile illuminating everyone around him.

Shiro nodded. “Part-time. He needs the extra hours until he’s finished with his teaching credentials. I still can’t really believe that’s what he wants to—well. None of us would be here without the Garrison instructors, right?”

Keith watched Shiro’s fingers tighten around the strap of his bag, then loosen slowly, like Shiro wanted to say more but was holding back. “I don’t think I’d ever be patient enough to teach some of the people here,” he said, and Shiro laughed, the tension easing out of his limbs again.

“Not everyone can be a prodigy, Keith,” he said, with a teasing tilt to his smile. “But you’re right, it takes a special talent to guide others through getting their wings. I forget that sometimes.”

When he stood, Keith automatically followed. “I guess I should head out, too,” he said.

“It’ll be lights out soon,” Shiro agreed. He pointed to the box, which looked like it’d been slowly deflating, probably flattening whatever was still left of the cake inside. “Are you gonna toss that as soon as I’m out of sight? Should I take care of it for you?”

“No,” Keith said, grabbing it off the desk. He had no intention of eating the rest, but he liked seeing the soft, pleased expression that settled around Shiro’s mouth and the corners of his eyes.

They moved quietly through the stacks, spaces narrow enough that Keith had to follow behind Shiro, his eyes absently fixed on the smooth movement of Shiro’s broad shoulders. He jumped a little when Shiro finally spoke again.

“It’s funny,” Shiro said. “Adam’s glasses—the Garrison could fix his vision if he wanted, but he insists on keeping them. Says it makes him feel more like himself.” He glanced back at Keith for a moment, an unreadable expression crossing his face, like he’d dipped into a private joke that Keith didn’t have access to. “I guess he’s going for the hot librarian professor look, huh? Not all of us can pull that off.”

Keith couldn’t stop himself from frowning a little. He couldn’t imagine _not_ choosing perfect vision, a decision that would keep any pilot, no matter how capable, grounded on Earth. The discomfort went deeper than that, though. He felt weird, sometimes, when Shiro talked about Adam. They’d known each other for years—about as long as they’d been at the Garrison, Shiro had said. They’d been roommates for most of the time and had a visible connection, a shorthand that was unique to the two of them.

Adam was Shiro’s best friend. Keith knew that. But he couldn’t keep something strange and unreasonable and...jealous, maybe, from sparking through him whenever Shiro talked about Adam like this. Like no matter how close the two of them got, there would always be a whole separate area of Shiro’s life that Keith could never be a part of.

They were within sight of the front desk before long, Shiro’s steps quickening when Adam came into view. Shiro stopped short of him, though, and gestured eagerly back at Keith.

“I can’t believe the two of you haven’t officially met yet. Adam, this is Keith—the guy who’s already destroying some of our old flight times.”

“Keith,” Adam said, shaking his hand and giving him an assessing once-over. “Yeah, Takashi told me you knocked his lunar run off the board earlier this week. Congrats; I thought it’d take years for anyone to manage that.”

“I didn’t know word about that had gotten around,” Keith said, glancing at Shiro, who looked slightly sheepish.

“The cake was partly for that, too,” he said. “Happy belated birthday slash congratulations.”

“I told him not to bake it himself,” Adam said. He shook his head, sounding exasperated but fond. “And he wouldn’t let me help.”

“Doesn’t count as my present if someone else does all the work,” Shiro said. He reached out to tap the top of the box, which Keith had pressed possessively against his chest while the two of them were talking, as though some unconscious part of him was concerned they were going to try to take it away. “Please don’t force yourself to keep eating it. You’ve got the solar loop coming up on Wednesday, right? Gotta be in peak condition for that, it’s a tough one. I heard they’ve added extra flares since we did it.”

“Takashi,” Adam said, dragging Shiro’s attention back to him. “We should go before the commissary closes. Keith, it was nice to finally meet you.”

Keith nodded, taking the hint that it was time for him to split off from the two of them and whatever they had planned for the night. He turned back as he was leaving the building, not exactly sure why—to see how far behind they were, maybe, or to catch one last glimpse of Shiro to carry him through the rest of the weekend.

They were still at the desk, standing much closer to each other now. Keith lingered, watching Shiro lift his hand to Adam’s shoulder, his thumb resting against his collarbone, before he brushed his open palm up the side of Adam’s throat, his fingers curling behind Adam’s ear.

Adam was about the same height as Shiro; their noses bumped, briefly, as they tilted their heads toward each other. Before their lips met, Shiro’s mouth curved into that same private smile that Keith had only seen a few times—when the conversation turned to Adam, when they suddenly veered off onto jarringly unfamiliar roads, Shiro seeming to speak a language Keith never fully grasped.

His fingers spasmed, crumpling the cake box as heat curled through his belly, threaded by a fresh surge of dark jealousy. His skin felt hypersensitive suddenly, scorched by sensations he’d never thought to name.

Oh, he thought, the confusing muddle of emotions recognizable at last. Oh _no_.


	2. Chapter 2

“We’re celebrating,” Shiro insisted, excitedly smacking his hand against Keith’s shoulder, hard enough to make him rock back on his feet.

Keith couldn’t stop grinning. He hadn’t cared about earning that new stripe on his uniform, accepting it with an uncomfortable nod in the stupid little ceremony cadets had to sit through, then nearly forgetting about it until Shiro had heard the news and dragged him to their hangar for a special victory run.

“It’s not a big deal,” he said. Shiro’s enthusiasm was contagious, but: “A bunch of other people got theirs, too. It doesn’t really mean anything.”

“It means you’re one step closer to getting up there,” Shiro said, nodding at the launch pad looming nearby, making their hoverbikes feel small, insignificant in the shadow of a ship that could literally reach the stars.

Admittedly, Keith had spent a lot of time thinking about that. Initially, it’d been about leaving Earth behind—the universe beckoned, full of possibilities waiting to be discovered by someone who didn’t have anything to tether him to this planet that had rarely felt like home. That drive to escape had slowly transitioned into a genuine desire to _explore_ , to bring fresh knowledge back, to be the first person to step foot on the moons of the outermost planets, maybe even to push past the limits of their solar system.

Lately, though, his dreams had shifted again. He wasn’t alone in them anymore. He had someone by his side: a co-pilot to share the journey with. A friend who’d feel the same awe, who understood the burning need to do something _more_ with his life, to forge new paths into expanses no one else had ever been able to reach.

“I guess,” he said, playing it cool. “Maybe we’ll even go on a mission together, if you’re not too old and broken down by the time they let me start piloting for real.”

It was a refrain of their usual joke; Shiro’s career had barely begun, with _decades_ of flights left ahead of him, and Keith should easily be able to graduate in less than two years.

But Shiro’s smile slipped. “Yeah,” he said, absently wrapping his fingers around his wrist, before he noticed what he was doing and pulled his hand away. “You’ll probably break my record for youngest pilot, too.” His voice turned sharp and playful then, the oddly somber tone shaken off, like it had never happened. “But not by much. And I can guarantee you’re not ready to beat me yet. We’re doing the canyon circuit today, stay on your toes.”

It was one of their more dangerous routes; Shiro was typically cautious at certain precarious stretches, always predictable in where he’d let off on the throttle to keep from overbalancing. This time, he flew with breathtaking speed and grace, skimming through hairpin turns with an almost reckless confidence, as though the cliffs would simply move around him if he asked.

Keith was left in his dust, something that hadn’t happened since he’d gotten the hang of the hoverbikes and accepted that Shiro _wanted_ him to do well, that he was as genuinely enthusiastic about Keith’s successes as his own.

He eased off for the last few meters, leaving space to see Shiro tearing his goggles off and swiping his forearm over his eyes, as though grit from the wind-whipped flight had managed to slip through. By the time Keith pulled up beside him, Shiro was back to his usual self: polished, in control, but with something about him that felt...brittle, almost, poised to shatter if Keith struck from the wrong angle.

Keith wasn’t used to being diplomatic. He didn’t really know how to be anything but honest, especially around Shiro. But the tightness in Shiro’s shoulders and around his eyes felt wrong, making something ache in Keith’s chest in response. He pushed his goggles to the top of his head, sweeping his hair out of his eyes, and kept his voice as light as he could. “I thought this was supposed to be celebrating my new rank, not proving how well you’d earned _yours_ , Lieutenant Shirogane.”

Shiro gave him a startled look; Keith was pretty certain that was the first time he’d ever addressed him with any sort of formal title.

He confirmed it by flushing slightly, then shaking his head, turning away to loop his goggles over the handlebar of his bike. “That sounds...strange, coming from you, Keith. Why don’t you just stick to Shiro.”

“Yessir,” Keith said, snapping out a smart salute.

It worked; Shiro’s tight posture loosened all the way, his eyes lit with that familiar, ever-present good humor. “There are hours left before we have to get back. You up for another round?”

“Do you even have to ask?” Keith said, revving his engine for emphasis, then kicking off with a wide, showy loop of the basin that gave Shiro just enough time to catch him.

The wind tore at his hair, heat shimmering off the sun-baked terrain, their engines roaring in unison as they crested another ridge, following an unmapped path they’d both learned by heart. Keith forgot everything but the power thrumming under his hands, Shiro’s steady presence guiding him, spurring him on.

***

Shiro chose the Kerberos mission.

Word spread rapidly through the Garrison—in hushed whispers at first, then in a crescendo of chatter that even Keith couldn’t ignore. Everyone knew long before the official announcement. A couple of the cadets in Keith’s class—an engineer and a mid-range pilot who’d been vaguely friendly over the past year—tried to pry additional information out of him.

He’d merely scowled and walked on. Even if he’d been inclined to share Shiro’s personal business with near-strangers, he didn’t know any details past what Shiro had told him that afternoon outside their hangar; they’d spoken since then, of course, but not about anything substantial.

There were rumors about Adam, too; Keith tried not to listen, but a few filtered through. More than one person had heard them arguing, and there was a reasonably reliable account, from someone who had Adam as a TA, that claimed he’d shown up to class looking as though he hadn’t slept, with red-rimmed eyes and a heavily wrinkled uniform jacket that didn’t remotely adhere to regulations.

No one said anything about Shiro’s health.

The Kerberos announcement, when it finally came, was padded with media-friendly soundbites. They used a new photo of Shiro—serious instead of smiling, with the undercut he’d mostly chosen as a way to escape the relentless summer heat. _You should try it_ , he’d told Keith, with a playful flick of the hair at the back of Keith’s neck—always shaggier than it was supposed to be, but something the Garrison had given up reprimanding him for. _Although I don’t think I’d recognize you then_ , Shiro had said, the corners of his eyes crinkling in amusement.

The others, the Holts, were names Keith didn’t know well. Shiro had mentioned Sam often, with an unusual mixture of respect and fondness, and they’d been on a few shorter-range missions in the past, but Keith had never met him face-to-face. He stared at the photo—a grey-haired, genial man with glasses slipping down his nose—and saved it to his tablet as a reminder of who would have Shiro’s back on this mission. Commander Holt looked kind. Competent. The fact that he’d fought for Shiro, that he’d stood firm in front of Admiral Sanda, spoke well enough for him to earn some degree of Keith’s trust.

Matthew Holt was less interesting to Keith, but as the youngest crew member and a focal point of the press release, he was gaining significant attention from others. Keith suspected that was an intentional move by the “big guns” Shiro had spoken of with some disdain. They couldn’t take Shiro out of the spotlight completely—he was a media darling, both inspirational and easy on the eyes—but playing up the father and son scientist duo, the story of a new graduate embarking on his first mission, let them dodge trickier questions that might’ve been uncovered otherwise.

There was no doubt in Keith’s mind that Shiro was prepared for this mission, that he had the skills and strength to bring them all home. The length of the journey was harder to swallow.

Keith wasn’t family—wasn’t someone high in command who’d receive personalized messages or updates on the mission’s status before they’d been scrubbed clean for public scrutiny. He’d have no idea what was really happening, how Shiro was doing, until they got back.

He set his tablet down and rubbed at his temples. He didn’t know how Shiro was doing _now_. They were supposed to meet after Keith’s classes—it was a Friday, they had the weekend stretching ahead of them, and the time left to spend together was shortening by the day—but Shiro had made a noncommittal noise when Keith had last checked in with him. He wasn’t sure if Shiro would actually be showing up.

He went to the hangar anyway. Pulled his bike out, started tinkering with some minor upgrades that he and Shiro had been talking through. He wasn’t an expert, by any means, but he knew enough about the inner workings now to mostly make the machine do what he wanted.

Shiro’s footsteps echoed across the tarmac—a deliberate shift from his natural, gracefully silent gait that he always did for Keith’s benefit, to avoid startling him in situations like this. Keith bumped his head a bit on the undercarriage of the hoverbike, anyway, in his rush to push himself into view.

Shiro looked...exhausted. There was no other word for it. There were dark smudges under his eyes—faint but definitely visible—and his militarily precise posture was slumped more than Keith had ever seen it.

“Sorry,” he said. “I know I’m late.”

“I was fixing my bike,” Keith said, discarding his impulse to ask if Shiro was okay. The answer was obvious. He’d already pushed enough, making it clear that he was more than ready to offer whatever kind of support Shiro needed. Shiro got that now; he’d talk about it if he wanted. “Hold on, let me finish up. Shouldn’t take too much longer.”

He slid underneath the engine, listening to the rustle of Shiro’s clothes, the quiet squeak of his leather jacket as he sat down, his back resting against Keith’s hoverbike.

There was a long gap before Shiro spoke again, the regular noise of the Garrison carrying on around them in the meantime: vehicles trundling by, aircraft roaring overhead, a drill sergeant barking out orders.

“I’m guessing you’ve heard the news?” he asked eventually.

“About Kerberos? Yep. It’s amazing, Shiro, congrats.”

A short stretch of silence followed, brief enough to barely be noticeable, but Keith could hear the hint of a smile returning to Shiro’s voice. “Thanks, Keith. I’m...looking forward to it. Sam’s never been this excited about a mission before.”

“You’re collecting ice samples, right?” Keith made a final adjustment and started packing his tools away.

Shiro chuckled. “Yeah. Not the most glamorous activity, but Sam’s convinced we might finally gather some proof of extraterrestrial life. I have a feeling he and Matt will be talking about it nonstop the entire way there.”

“Sounds like a blast,” Keith said dryly. He stood up, stretching the kinks out of his back, thinking about what it would really be like to spend that much time hurtling through space, crammed into a vessel you hoped would hold together.

Shiro made a soft, amused noise. “Wish you could come with us,” he said quietly, his gaze fixed off somewhere in the distance.

“Guess it’d be nice for you to have another non-scientist brain up there.”

“Yeah,” Shiro said, like that wasn’t the full story, but neither of them pursued it.

Once outside the Garrison, they flew at a relatively leisurely pace, Keith following Shiro’s lead. It was late afternoon, the days growing shorter, dusk already beginning to sweep over the edges of the barren landscape. They halted at one of their usual spots; neither of them left their bikes, and Keith waited to hear if that was it, if Shiro was ready to head back.

He stared out at the horizon, his jaw set in a sharp line, an idle breeze tugging at the tufts of hair that’d stuck out a bit on the sides since he’d shaved the rest down. Keith didn’t look away when Shiro finally turned toward him.

His eyes seemed darker than usual, a stormy grey that matched the ragged edge he couldn’t quite smooth out of his voice. “I’m not in the mood for a race today. Can we just...go somewhere?”

It was a ridiculous question to ask Keith; he didn’t _have_ anywhere, not outside of the Garrison, or Shiro. He thought about the first time they’d come here, though, and cast his gaze out at the desert, in a different direction than Shiro had been looking. “Yeah,” he said. “I think I know a place.”

It took a bit of hunting to get on the right track; it’d been more than seven years, Keith figured, since he’d last been out here. Eventually, he found his old bus stop, the sign rusted and hanging at an angle—there’d been scattered outposts, mostly abandoned now, and the bus line must’ve followed in their wake. From there, the rest was instinctive, muscle memory and a thick rush of nostalgia taking over.

The house was still standing. Keith stepped off his bike, then had to shut his eyes suddenly, bracing himself against the image that flashed in his vision—his pop hanging their tire swing from a sturdy tree limb, coaxing Keith into trying it. A little wary at first, Keith had fallen in love with the sensation, begging for more, always wanting to swing _higher_ , until the limb’s creaking signaled its limits.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, and Keith felt Shiro move to his side. It was getting late in the year for any substantial storms; it would probably pass quickly, or only manifest as ozone-tinged heat and jagged streaks of lightning. Still, best to be safe.

“We should get the bikes under some shelter,” Keith said. “The shed might fit both, if we’re careful.”

It took some juggling; they had to relocate a few stacks of heavy boxes that Keith didn’t remember seeing before. One let out a metallic clunk when Shiro dropped it into place, and Keith pried open the top to take a look inside.

“Looks like satellite equipment,” Shiro said. “Or maybe the setup for some sort of long-range radios. Was your dad into that kind of thing?”

The question stirred a half-buried memory, something Keith couldn’t grasp before it drifted out of reach. He shook his head in frustration, shutting the box.

“I guess the government didn’t care enough to clear all this out,” he said. He didn’t know what he’d expected. Possibly some new construction in its place, or the buildings at least razed to the ground. No one had ever told him what had happened to the property; he’d never thought to ask. It was possible, if they’d owned the land outright, that it was still in his name. He had no idea how to check that, or what he’d do with it if that was the case.

On their way to the house, Keith detoured by the tree. It must be taller now, even with the minimal nourishment it got out here, but it felt much smaller than he remembered. He rested his palm against the rough bark, mutely thanking it for the comforting shade it’d cast over his childhood. The rope his pop had looped over the low-hanging branch was long gone, the tire on its side, sun-cracked and partially covered by a shifting heap of red sand.

Thunder cracked again, closer this time, the air pressing down, heavy with the promise of rain.

“Do you still have a key?” Shiro asked. “Or are we breaking in?”

The window above the porch had never latched properly; Shiro boosted Keith up, and he scrambled across the roof, wincing as shingles flaked away under his feet. Shiro’s shoulders were spattered with water droplets by the time Keith had gotten downstairs and wrenched the weather-beaten front door open.

“Hope the roof in here doesn’t leak as much as the one over the porch,” Shiro said cheerfully, stripping his jacket off and carefully hanging it on a peg by the door, then looking around for a minute before stooping to remove his boots as well. “So this is where you grew up.”

It was strange, seeing Shiro here. The house felt smaller inside than Keith had remembered, too; the doorposts and ceilings were lower, the rooms narrow enough to cross in a few quick strides.

“It’s getting pretty dark,” he said, moving into the kitchen to see if he could find their old stock of candles. He pitched his voice louder so Shiro could hear him. “We had a generator for nights like this, but I’m not sure it works anymore; my pop said it was running mostly on duct tape and chewing gum back then.”

He heard a _shhhhk_ and a rustle in the living room, followed by a heavy thump and a sharp burst of Shiro’s laughter.

“I may have ruined your curtains,” Shiro admitted when Keith entered the room, carrying a couple of hurricane lanterns, a box of matches, and a good stock of candles. The curtains behind the couch were partially open, one side raggedly hanging off the rod. Shiro made a futile attempt to adjust them, and a thick chunk of fabric came away in his hand. “I should...probably stop now,” he said.

“I guess they’re disintegrating from age. Plus this room always got a lot of direct sunlight.” Keith stacked the supplies on the coffee table, a sturdy wooden piece he’d helped his pop construct. At least, that was how he’d seen it then; he must’ve only been six or seven at the time.

He lit both lanterns, their warm light pooling across the table, suffusing the room with a soft glow. It wasn’t fully dark outside yet, and the patter of rain had slowed, the storm already beginning to pull apart.

Shiro had gone quiet again, his hand cupped loosely around his right wrist. He’d been doing that more often lately; Keith wasn’t sure if it was from heightened stress, or if, despite the tests and the Kerberos go-ahead, his condition was worsening. His expression went wry when he caught Keith looking.

“It doesn’t hurt,” he said, as though he’d read Keith’s mind—not that it’d take much guesswork in this context. “I’m thinking, that’s all. It’s been a tough week. Sorry I’m not great company.”

Keith hesitated, rumors swimming through his mind again, mixing with the unaccustomed harshness in Shiro’s voice when he’d mentioned Adam’s alignment with those trying to keep him grounded. He didn’t know if Shiro wanted to talk about any of that. He didn’t know if _he_ wanted to hear it. But he also didn’t want Shiro to decide to leave.

“Let me grab something else,” he said, taking one of the lanterns back to the kitchen to search through the cabinets. The one over the fridge—only a slight stretch now that he’d finally gained a little more height—yielded what he was looking for.

Shiro had settled onto the couch, his arm slung easily over the back, when Keith returned. He paused in the doorway, momentarily taken off guard by the relief that shot through him at the sight. Irrationally, he’d half-expected to find an empty room, Shiro’s hoverbike already a dark blur on the horizon.

“Is that whiskey?” Shiro tilted his chin at the hefty bottle in Keith’s hand.

Keith shrugged. “Seemed like you could use it.”

Shiro shifted to the edge of the couch, his knees bumping against the coffee table, and took the glass Keith offered. They’d been stored upside down and looked okay to Keith, but Shiro peered inside anyway, then blew gently, his eyes fluttering shut, his eyelashes long and dark, the shape of his mouth mesmerizing.

“Dust,” he explained when he was done.

Keith swallowed, then uncapped the bottle and poured himself the rough equivalent of two fingers.

“Less for me,” Shiro said, tapping the side of the glass when Keith had poured enough—little more than a splash in comparison, but Keith felt like he'd need the fortification.

The first sip burned some, but after that, the taste wasn't bad. The guys at the Home had snuck beers sometimes—they treated it like a game, to see who the matron would catch, and had often shoved their stashes under Keith’s bed to make sure he took the fall—but hard alcohol had been less accessible.

He folded his legs under the table and propped his chin on one arm, swirling his glass with the other, watching the reflection of the lanterns’ flames shiver through the amber liquid. “Whiskey doesn’t go bad, does it?” he asked after another swallow, letting the heat stream down his throat, carrying all the way to his fingertips.

“I don’t think so,” Shiro said. He studied the bottle, as if considering it, then poured himself a bit more.

“It’s not exactly a cake,” Keith said. He tipped his glass toward Shiro’s, until Shiro clinked them together. They each took another sip, Shiro’s mouth lifting into a smile at the edge of his glass, lending Keith more courage than the alcohol itself. “I guess this is my version of a Kerberos celebration. Congratulations...slash belated birthday. We never celebrated yours.”

“Didn’t have one this year,” Shiro said.

“A party?” Keith hadn’t heard about one; he’d assumed he simply hadn’t been invited. He’d done his best not to let that knowledge hurt.

“A birthday,” Shiro said, swiping his finger in a leisurely arc through the thick dust coating the tabletop, then pressing a small dot into the center. “I was born on leap day. Takes four orbits around the sun before I age a year.”

“I don’t think it works that way,” Keith said. “You mean you don’t do anything for it the other years?”

Shiro _loved_ birthdays. He’d made a big deal out of Keith’s seventeenth, only weeks earlier. At least, in comparison with all the years that had passed without notice, it’d felt like a big deal to Keith. Shiro had taken him to a tiny taco shop in Plaht City—tucked into a side street, with cramped tables that wobbled precariously over the curb of the narrow sidewalk, but with some of the best food Keith had ever tasted.

He’d eaten until he physically couldn’t swallow another bite, then groaned when Shiro triumphantly produced a familiar-looking box—smaller this time, but undoubtedly full of another well-intentioned attempt at dessert.

 _Shiro, I can’t_ , Keith had protested. _No offense to your baking, but if I try to eat anything else right now, I’m gonna be sick._

 _It’s not a cake; I’ve had more time to figure you out since your last birthday_ , Shiro had said, looking pleased with himself.

 _Last pseudo-birthday, it wasn’t that long ago_ , Keith had said. His curiosity piqued, though, he’d traded his empty plate for the gift, unfolding the tissue paper inside to reveal a pair of fingerless gloves.

 _To protect your hands when you're flying_ , Shiro had said, his smile hooking into Keith’s chest. If he tried to tear it free at this point, Keith thought, he'd bleed out in seconds.

“Adam always insists on doing something,” Shiro said. He smudged his drawing away, disturbing a cloud of dust particles that hung in the air between them, a microscopic asteroid field Keith had no way of traversing.

He couldn't bring himself to say anything at first. Adam made Shiro happy—Keith _knew_ that. He should be supportive; he should be the kind of friend Shiro felt comfortable talking to about every aspect of his life, especially when it came to someone as important as his longterm boyfriend.

“That's good,” he managed, more gruffly than he would've liked, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances. “I'm glad.”

Shiro lifted his glass, then set it down without touching its contents. “We broke up, Keith.”

He didn't wait for Keith to say anything—which was good, since it was going to take Keith a long time to process those words, much less formulate an acceptable response.

“When I told you that he didn't want me to go to Kerberos...that was an ultimatum. Him or the mission.” Shiro reached for the hurricane lantern on his side of the table, slowly turning the knob so the flame stretched higher, testing its glass-walled restraints. “He knew what I'd choose, and he made me say it anyway.”

“So you fought; that's normal,” Keith said. It didn’t mean a permanent breakup. Not that he had personal experience to draw from—his own or any relationships close enough to be impacted by. But this was _Shiro._ Keith had never known anything with such bone-deep certainty: you didn't give up on Shiro, no matter how rough the alternatives might be.

“We've been doing a lot of that lately.” Shiro glanced at him, a quick, almost embarrassed flutter of his eyelashes. “I'm surprised you haven't already heard. Half a dozen people stopped me on the way to the hangar today to ask me about it.”

Keith shook his head—not denying the gossip; he'd heard enough for this to not come as a complete surprise. He was simply unable to accept a reality where it was possible to have Shiro's love and let it slip away.

You didn't hold someone like that in your arms and decide to _let go_.

“You’ll sort it out, Shiro,” he said earnestly. “If not now—when you get back. Adam’s not going anywhere.”

Shiro made a skeptical sound, deep in his throat. “But I am,” he said, sounding darkly amused.

His face softened when he saw Keith’s scowl, his voice dipping into a too-familiar reassuring tone; one that Keith had grown to rely on, and which he wouldn’t be hearing for a stretch of time that suddenly felt endless.

“Keith—I didn’t expect it to bother you. I...honestly, I got the impression you didn’t care that much for him.”

“I care about you,” Keith said. “Adam matters to you.”

Sometimes, Shiro’s eyes seemed unfathomably kind. Keith stared into them, unable to express what he meant, but willing Shiro to understand it, all the same.

One of the best things about Shiro was that he nearly always did, without Keith needing to dig out layers of emotions to explain.

“He’s meant a lot to me for a long time,” Shiro said. The flickering light cast shadows along his face as he paused to gather the rest of his thoughts. “Sometimes relationships end. I hadn't expected ours to. Looking back...the signs were all there. I should've been paying closer attention.”

“This wasn't your fault,” Keith snapped, anger spiking, as though he could defend Shiro from himself.

Shiro said Keith’s name again, softly, endless meaning packed into that single syllable. Keith jutted his chin out, daring him to disagree.

Shiro shook his head after a moment. “Our dreams didn’t align,” he said. “We tried to make them, and it worked—long enough to be worthwhile, but not permanently. You can hit a breaking point without realizing you’ve been hurtling toward it. This one caught us both by surprise, when it shouldn’t have.” He turned the lantern down again, to a lower, more manageable flame. “Relationships...there’s no manual for them. I wish there was. It’s not something I’ve ever been great at.”

That was another concept that Keith had trouble allowing into his worldview—Shiro, bad at anything?—but he let it pass by without argument. He tipped more whiskey into Shiro’s glass instead, and Shiro drank from it slowly, his gaze traveling unhurriedly around the room before settling back on Keith.

“It’s so quiet here. Has it always been like that?”

Were there more people around during Keith’s childhood, he probably meant; not just in this house, where it’d always been the two of them, but in other scattered neighborhoods in the surrounding desert.

“Pretty much,” he said. “You saw the places we passed on the way out; some of them used to have people living there, but not much has changed otherwise. My pop liked it that way. Said that’s why he moved out here.”

Keith could admit it felt a little strange now, after spending years in surroundings where other people were an ever-present constant, where you could barely find any silence to rest in, outside of your own head.

The question highlighted something Keith hadn’t been consciously aware of until then: he felt calm. Being near Shiro often had that effect on him, but this ran deeper. For the first time in far too long, his body wasn’t braced against a barrage of sound. With neither of them speaking, the room—the entire world around them—was completely, utterly silent. If he could stay here forever, in this quiet bubble with Shiro, he would, in a heartbeat.

Shiro stretched his arm toward the window, a solid sheet of black now that the sun had fully gone down. He pressed his hand against its reflection, as though a part of him had expected it to simply pass through the glass. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in darkness this complete. Not on Earth, anyway.”

The Garrison was different from the Home in many ways, most of them positive. Keith’s room was far more comfortable, shared with one person rather than a dozen stacked in bunks. The food was better; it’d taken months of generously portioned meals before he’d started to fill out his cadet uniform, before the stomach-clawing sensation of being perpetually half-starved had finally begun to fade.

He could see where Shiro was coming from with the rest, though. At either location, there was always light filtering in through the windows and around the door frames, making it hard at first for Keith to fall asleep. And the noise was worse. An incessant hum of machinery and humanity: traffic, sirens, air conditioning units, aircraft and heavy vehicles, conversations transitioning into barely muffled fights, the tramp of patrolling feet in the corridors. There was always something happening, something that may have had no impact on Keith but wore on his nerves all the same.

“What was your life like before the Garrison?” he asked. They’d never really talked about that. Shiro rarely shared details of his personal life—while significantly more talkative than Keith on the surface, he was deceptively difficult to get to know. Keith had gotten partway there, digging just far enough to crave the rest.

“Guess I’m a city boy,” Shiro said. “I’ve never lived in a place like this, so far away from everyone. Does it get lonely?”

It was the kind of dodge Keith had grown to expect; Shiro had a way of focusing attention back on the other person, making them feel so special in the process, they quickly forgot that they were answering their own questions. He didn’t use that method on Keith often, seemingly aware that Keith had always seen right through it. Sometimes, though, they both pretended.

“It can be a lot lonelier in crowds,” he said.

Shiro inclined his head in wordless agreement.

Conversation was minimal for a while after that; Shiro produced a unsurprising array of snacks from the packs he always had on him, and they drifted into companionable silence, each largely caught up in their own thoughts.

Once Keith had picked his portion free of everything but golden raisins and banana chips, he traded off with Shiro, who’d eaten his bag down to the almonds and apricots.

“Still can’t believe you’d rather eat these tasteless chunks,” Keith said, finding a stray banana chip and tossing it to Shiro, who neatly caught it and slid it into his mouth, smiling as he snapped his teeth through the slice.

There was a soft flush over Shiro’s nose and cheeks, the alcohol visibly working its way through his system. Keith, for his part, had felt an initial buzz that had faded more quickly than he seemed to be able to drink.

For a split second, he could almost see his pop in the doorway, ruefully shaking a family-sized box of cereal that five-year-old Keith had emptied in a late-night trek to the kitchen. _You have your mother’s metabolism_ , he’d said, one of the few times he’d mentioned her of his own volition.

Keith sloshed a larger amount into his glass, then drained it, grimacing through the burn.

“That,” Shiro said, “seems like a bad idea.” He made no attempt to stop him, although he did push his own glass away.

By the time Keith had finished off his trail mix, the whiskey’s effect had subsided again. It was another oddity to add to the list that he’d begun cataloguing once he’d realized there were discernible differences between him and the others around him. _Normal people_ , Keith thought, a concept that he hadn’t been aware of until he’d been forced to interact with them on a daily basis.

He stood to help Shiro, who’d begun wrestling with the curtains again, in what looked like a losing battle. After another sun-brittle section pulled free from the rod, Keith made a quick foray to the hall closet, returning with a stack of blankets and a large sheet.

“This should cover it,” he said, handing Shiro the sheet. He set the blankets on one end of the couch; there was a biting chill coming through the glass, presumably the reason Shiro had wanted to close it off.

When Shiro sat back down, though, he didn’t touch the blankets. “It’s unsettling to have that much darkness at your back,” he said. “After a while, you start to feel eyes on you, even though logically there’s nothing out there.”

“There might be,” Keith said. “Probably not humans, but you may hear some coyotes howling later.” It could be an eerie experience, a yipping, quavering chorus that typically sounded much bigger than the actual size of the pack; Keith had always found it strangely comforting, a sign of life carrying on beyond their walls.

“I don’t think we can fly back tonight,” Shiro said. “I didn’t exactly think this through.” He didn’t sound particularly concerned about it; he picked his glass back up and swirled the liquid inside. “Truth is, I shouldn’t really be drinking at all, not when I’m in mission training.”

As genuinely happy as he was for Shiro, the reminder sent a jolt through Keith. “It’s still more than a month away,” he said. Sooner than he liked, but time enough to find a way to adjust to the idea of not having Shiro within reach whenever he needed him.

Shiro was still focused on their present circumstances. “We’ve already missed curfew. If they do a bed check, I’ll talk to Iverson. I roped you into this.”

There was no sense in debating levels of responsibility; Keith would shoulder his part of the blame if it came to that. In reality, though, most folks at the Garrison looked the other way when it came to Shiro’s minor transgressions. He was a rule follower in every aspect that counted, such a shining example of all the Garrison’s selling points that he essentially had an open pass to come and go from the base as he pleased. Keith, swept along in Shiro’s wake, benefited from the unspoken arrangement; when they took their bikes out, the border guards would simply nod them through the gates in recognition.

“My roommate barely notices when I’m around, anyway,” Keith said, in case Shiro needed some sort of reassurance. Unlike Shiro, Keith had a wealth of experience when it came to getting into trouble—recognizing what might land him there, and dealing with the consequences. “I doubt he’ll report me; he’ll be too happy to get rid of me for a night.”

“And I don’t have one anymore.” Shiro laughed—a sharp, abrupt sound that caught in his throat.

“What do you mean?”

Shiro stared into his glass, as if it held the answers to questions far more complex than the one Keith had asked. When it didn’t produce any explanations of its own, he set it down and scrubbed his hands over his face. “That’s part of why I was late meeting you today. I moved out. It’ll be Adam’s apartment once I’m gone, anyway; there was no point in staying there and arguing every single day until I leave.”

“Where will you go?” Keith asked, more distraught at the idea than he should’ve been. Something about that step made everything seem more final, somehow. Like Shiro was methodically disconnecting his anchors before leaving Earth. Like he’d accepted what Keith absolutely refused to acknowledge—that after this mission was done, his life would utterly change, the remaining span of it a slim thread that could snap at any moment. “Shiro,” he rasped out, his entire being aching at that thought, rejecting it.

“They’ll find somewhere to put me,” Shiro said. “Temporary housing for now; we’ll figure the rest out when I get back.” He shifted position abruptly, uncapping the bottle and pouring himself more whiskey. “Meanwhile, tonight’s a celebration, right? I haven’t really gotten to do that; everything’s been so wrapped up in dealing with Adam and Admiral Sanda and all the testing I’ve had to go through, I’ve barely had time to think about Kerberos.”

“You’re flying farther than anyone ever has.”

“Yeah,” Shiro said, a smile playing over his lips. “It’s amazing, huh? I’m lucky.”

“You earned it,” Keith said. “You work harder than anyone I’ve ever known.” Even when he was already head and shoulders above the competition, Shiro kept pushing himself. It was an intensity that few people had the privilege of witnessing up close, a drive to succeed—to _excel—_ that Keith had finally let himself begin tapping into. Shiro made him believe that a lot of things were possible to achieve if he wanted them badly enough.

At some point in the evening, they both wound up on the floor—Keith still sitting with one leg outstretched, the other folded under him, Shiro lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling.

“I,” he said, his voice warm and relaxed, “am apparently a lightweight. Either that or you’re finding a way to water yours down when I’m not looking.”

“Doesn’t affect me much,” Keith said.

Shiro had been letting his hair grow out a bit more in front; it fell softly over his forehead now, the thick, dark strands occasionally catching in his long eyelashes as he blinked. He was beautiful, Keith thought—not for the first time, but with a level of affection that he didn’t often allow himself to embrace. It was a dangerous path to tread, when he knew the outcome. Shiro would never know how he felt; most of the time, it was safer for Keith to lock his feelings away from himself, too, to deny the impossible depth of them.

“He was going to propose,” Shiro said.

Keith tore his gaze away from where it had drifted, to the soft part of Shiro’s lips.

Shiro tilted his head up a bit further, his eyes seeming to trace the long crack stretching across the ceiling. “He’d bought a ring. We’d talked about it; always kinda figured we would, you know. When the time was right, maybe when we were a little older. I guess he’d been getting impatient.”

Questions tumbled through Keith’s brain. _Would you have said yes? Had you ever planned how to ask him? When did you find out? Are you changing your mind now—will you go back to him tomorrow?_ He didn’t want to know any of the answers.

“He told me during one of our last fights. Said he was planning to ask first. That it’d be one of the few times he could ever get somewhere before me.” Shiro’s forehead furrowed, pain shadowing his face. “He said the only other time he’d beaten me to anything was when he fell in love.”

Keith didn’t understand. It was an oddly competitive way to view a relationship. “Shouldn’t it be equal?” he asked. “Not about who does what first, but whether you end up at the same place together?”

“That was the problem, apparently,” Shiro said. “Adam didn’t think we ever were. He told me I’ve always loved flying more than him. That if he stayed, he’d never feel like he came first in my life.”

Adam was wrong, of course; Keith had seen the way Shiro looked at him. Had, in his weaker moments, imagined how it'd feel to have that attention focused on him instead.

“Flying’s different,” he said, trying to figure out how to explain it to someone like Adam, a pilot who, despite his skill, didn't have the need for flight streaming through his veins, leaving him restless and lost when he'd been grounded for too long.

“He was asking me to prove I loved him by cutting off a part of myself,” Shiro said. “And I couldn't.”

“Then there wasn't any other option,” Keith said. Shiro didn't seem as fully convinced; Keith dialed back the forcefulness of his assertion, giving Shiro the space to work through any lingering doubts he may have had. “Do you think it was the right decision?”

“I’d regret it for the rest of my life if I didn’t go.” Shiro touched the thick silver band on his wrist—the bit of technology that both kept him tied to Earth and gave him the strength and freedom to leave it behind one last time. “You could say I’m fortunate to know that with so much certainty. Not a lot of people have that kind of perspective.”

“Stop saying it like that,” Keith gritted out, the wound tearing open further every time Shiro spoke so pragmatically about his future—or lack thereof.

“Keith,” Shiro said, turning to look at him—directly into his eyes, which Keith knew were wide and dark with concern. “We’re allowed to have family at the launch site. Adam was supposed to be mine. Since that won’t be happening anymore—would you come? Be the one to see me off.”

 _Family_. Keith had been without for so long, he barely remembered how it was supposed to feel.

“What about the rest of your family? Wouldn’t it be too crowded? With your...” He hesitated, intending to say _parents_ but realizing that in all the time they’d known each other, he’d never heard Shiro speak of them. He’d mentioned his grandparents a few times, but only glancingly, in the past tense, and with no references to any other relatives.

“Don’t have any,” Shiro said.

Somehow, that had never occurred to Keith. Shiro didn’t carry himself like someone who walked through life alone.

“My parents have been out of the picture for a long time,” Shiro said. “My grandfather raised me. He died the year I started at the Garrison—a couple months before my acceptance letter came. He never got to see me enroll.”

It wasn’t enough to simply say _sorry_ , but Keith did anyway. That single word carried a lot of meanings. That he’d brought it up; that he’d never thought to ask before; that Shiro had been lonely and grieving in his early days at the Garrison.

Shiro shrugged, a subtle movement that lifted his shoulders slightly off the floor. “You know what it’s like.”

Keith pressed his hand over the shape of the card in his pocket and thought about the knife—currently slipped into one of his boots, waiting for him by the door; usually kept under his pillow or hidden on some part of his body. A link to someone he’d never meet.

“I’m not an orphan,” he said. “At least, as far as I know, my mom’s still alive. She just...didn’t want me, I guess. She left us. My pop never told me why.”

“She’s missing out on a lot,” Shiro said. He sat up, shifting into a cross-legged position, bringing them closer to eye level. “If she’s still out there somewhere, would you ever try to look for her? If you could track her down, would you?”

Keith thought about it. His mom held the answers to a lot of areas of his life that would otherwise remain a mystery. At the same time, she knew exactly where to find him. Either she’d never made the attempt, or she’d come back just for long enough to confirm that she’d been right to leave in the first place.

“Maybe,” he said. “But I wouldn’t force her back into my life; she’d have to choose that for herself.”

Shiro nodded, then fiddled with the band on his wrist, looking down, his dark eyelashes sweeping long shadows across the high arc of his cheekbones. “You haven’t said whether you’ll come to the launch.”

“Of course I’ll be there, if you want me,” Keith said. It was the easiest answer he’d ever had to give. “When you leave, and when you get back.”

***

Launch day arrived far too quickly, then passed in a blur of fleeting moments that Keith did his best to cling to, cementing them in his memory as well as he could.

Shiro was almost visibly vibrating with excitement, enthusiasm spilling out of every movement. He took Keith on a comprehensive tour, bringing them as close to the launch pad as they were allowed to get while the final mechanical checks were still underway.

Long before Keith was ready, it was time for Shiro to go—to change out of his uniform into his flight suit, to begin his preliminary flight procedures. To leave Earth—and Keith—behind.

Keith tried to unhunch his shoulders, to stand tall and proud, to fix himself in Shiro’s mind as clearly as Shiro would always remain in his. He stuck his hand out, his voice gruff with emotion. “Thanks for everything, Shiro,” he said. “I can’t wait to hear how the mission goes.”

“What groundbreaking discoveries we find in the ice,” Shiro laughed. He’d never been as sure as the Holts that they’d stumble across anything substantial out there, but he’d wanted to go, nonetheless.

He clasped Keith’s hand, his eyes fixed intently on Keith’s. His expression softened suddenly, and before Keith knew what was happening, his arm was being drawn into Shiro’s chest as Shiro wrapped him in a tight embrace.

Shiro was warm and solid against him, his shoulder blade rising and falling in a steady, comforting rhythm under the fierce grip of Keith’s free hand. Keith fell into the hug, burying his face in the curve of Shiro’s shoulder, breathing him in, cataloguing every trace of this moment, to last him until Shiro returned.

***

Keith’s world shattered five months later.

He was in the mess hall, carrying his heavily-loaded tray to his usual spot—a small two-person table, one chair pushed to the side, effectively discouraging anyone from approaching him—when a transmission flashed over the big screens lining the wall above the food stations. They were used for announcements that Keith typically didn’t care about, so he didn’t lift his head at first, too intent on steering past a group of cadets who’d unexpectedly frozen in their tracks.

Silence struck the room, an abrupt cessation of the usual hubbub, followed by a gasp that rippled outward from the screens, tugging Keith’s attention toward them.

If conversation picked up again—if the tears streaming down other cadets’ faces were an indication of audible shock—he wasn’t aware of it. He felt, distantly, the tray crashing to his feet, hot soup splashing up his boots, but he couldn’t hear the sound of the bowl shivering to pieces, or crunching under his feet as he turned.

KERBEROS MISSION DISAPPEARS, the screens said, in blinding white letters over a blood-red ribbon stretching below the photos. The Holts, permanently fixed in their eager smiles. And Shiro, larger than life, strong and capable and being blamed for something that could have never been his fault.

 _PILOT ERROR_.

Keith didn’t remember leaving the hall. He must’ve pushed past people, must’ve left a trail of crushed food and irreparably broken dishes behind as he fled.

He had no idea where he was going. His room wasn’t safe enough. Shiro didn’t have one anymore; his belongings had been placed in storage, somewhere Keith hadn’t thought to ask about and couldn’t access now.

The hangar.

Keith considered it, pictured himself taking one of the hoverbikes out to the desert, flying until he couldn’t see that image anymore, until he’d burned it away from his retinas. Until he could forget that Shiro...

Shiro...

He was yelling, possibly, crouched on the floor in an empty corridor, his fingers digging into the thin carpet, his body unable to contain the violent outpouring of grief that surged through it.

***

Keith skipped eight classes in the next three weeks, starting when an instructor—one he knew for a fact Shiro had never liked—plastered on a solemn countenance and made them observe a moment of silence for the lost crew, followed by a pilot-training exercise to examine reasons the mission might’ve failed.

Shiro wouldn’t have approved of Keith’s initial reaction. Holding onto that knowledge, gritting his teeth through the agony of Shiro not being there to talk him down, was the only way he managed to maintain a fraying hold on his temper, to simply walk out of the room instead.

 _You can do this, Keith,_ played through his mind on repeat, losing substance with each passing day. After a while, he couldn’t hear the words in Shiro’s voice anymore. There was only the raw echo of his own—then nothing.

He sat through four attempted instructor interventions, two increasingly frustrated Iverson lectures, and a strong-armed session with a Garrison therapist who wilted rapidly under his silent glare.

He didn’t want to talk to anyone. He didn’t want to go to class. He could barely bring himself to shower in the mornings, to make it to the mess hall at least once a day, to force himself to continue existing while Shiro was gone.

In the desert, flowers were blooming, a late spring coaxing life out of the most barren landscapes. It was Shiro’s favorite season; the previous year, he’d taken Keith up to the roof a few times, always as early in the mornings as he could manage.

 _Why are we here?_ Keith had asked, impatient, on their first trek up the stairs. Only one section of the building had direct roof access—at least, to a portion where Shiro said they’d be able to safely walk without discovery.

 _We could see the flowers better up close_ , Keith had insisted. _By actually being out there with them._

Shiro had kept climbing the stairs, patient, tireless. _Sometimes I like viewing things from a different perspective_ , he’d said once they’d reached his goal: a wide, flat expanse overlooking an admittedly beautiful stretch of desert. They’d sat, side by side, apparently waiting for the sun to rise.

When the first rays had begun to spill over the distant cliffs, the solar panels surrounding them had whirred to life, tilting in a slow, intricate dance that followed the sun’s steady climb. At the base of the cliffs, too far to be visible as more than splashes of vibrant color, the desert had bloomed.

Keith’s interest had waned quickly—while he could see the appeal, he’d much prefer to be skimming his bike over the lush floral pockets, exploring which basins had soaked up the unusually heavy rains that had led to this season’s extravagance. He’d turned to Shiro, intending to resume that argument, but the words had stuck in his throat.

He’d gotten to know Shiro well enough to forget, sometimes, how extraordinary he was. How looking at him could physically hurt, if you weren’t prepared.

Behind Shiro, the panels were gathering the sunrise, shimmering golden rows creating a backdrop that set off his almost otherworldly beauty. The light caught on his chiseled features, gilding them, making him almost seem to glow from within. He was impossible to look away from—more dazzling than anything else they could’ve come up here to see.

 _Golden Boy_ , Keith had thought, the term taking on new meaning.

Yet Shiro had always been more than that.

Since the mission failure, Keith had spent most of his mornings on the roof. The rainfall hadn’t been as generous this year; from this height, he could barely glimpse scattered patches of yellow and purple. Only the flowers with the deepest roots had pushed through the surface, stubbornly pulling out whatever nutrition they could find and proudly unfurling their petals to greet the sun.

 _If they can thrive out here_ , Shiro had said—his eyes luminous, picking up the early morning colors, his voice filled with awe that thumped through Keith’s chest in turn— _think of what we can do._

The memorial service was that afternoon. They’d delayed it, until “missing” had been true for long enough to transition to “presumed dead.”

Three weeks. That was as long as it took for everyone in the Garrison to give up on Shiro.

Keith had seen them arranging the details—had overheard Adam in Iverson’s office, with Colleen Holt, deciding how long each of them would speak at the ceremony, who would go first, what photos they would enlarge and put on display for everyone in the crowd to look at and pretend they understood how it felt to have their heart ripped away.

 _This unfortunate incident has been difficult on everyone_ , Iverson had said a few days earlier, during Keith’s second round in his office—marked in his record as a formal disciplinary hearing. _We understand that Lieutenant Shirogane was seen by many as...a hero. Your instructors have offered an extension on the assignments you’ve missed, but the behavior you’ve been exhibiting can’t continue. This is your final warning: if you don’t shape up soon, Cadet, you will no longer have a place at the Garrison._

Iverson had used a far more somber tone than he normally employed during class; Keith could, on some level, recognize the attempt at showing an appropriate level of concern. But his words had merely pressed on the gaping wound in Keith’s chest, reminding him that the only person who could’ve possibly comprehended the depth of his grief was the one responsible for it. The one he’d never be able to talk to again.

 _The wreaths will be fine_ , Adam had told Iverson, sounding exhausted and more than ready to be done with the debate over roses or carnations, potted plants versus floral displays. _Takashi wouldn’t have had a strong opinion. I’m okay with whatever Dr. Holt prefers._

Maybe Adam was right. He’d known Shiro better, for longer. Shiro probably wouldn’t have wanted a big fuss, in a public spectacle so far removed from his private life; that was one of the traits he’d shared with Keith. Neither of them placed much value on physical objects, either, not seeing the point in hanging onto items that would simply weigh you down.

Keith drew Shiro’s card out of his pocket, wondering what Shiro would’ve said if he’d known he’d kept it all this time. It was a pointless memento, as these things went: a recruitment card, mass-printed and distributed to anyone who showed enough interest in the Garrison. Shiro had touched it once, had handed it to Keith, that was all.

Had changed the entire course of Keith’s life in the process.

A sudden twist of wind nearly tugged the card free from his grasp; his heart lurched, and he moved back from the edge of the roof, tucking it safely back into place.

Shiro may not have asked for an elaborate ceremony, but he deserved more than white roses woven into a circle, a giant silk bow stuck on for emphasis, a generic decoration that merely signaled _funeral service_ , saying nothing about the kind of person Shiro had been. It couldn’t possibly convey what he’d meant to everyone around him. Or how much Keith had—

He covered his face for a moment, his eyes closed, his breathing ragged.

The only flowers Shiro had ever cared about were ones he would’ve never torn from the earth. His service shouldn’t be here, on a Garrison parade ground with hundreds of hastily assembled folding chairs and a televised broadcast.

Keith’s feet carried him to their hangar; he stopped outside and pressed his forehead to the door, one hand flat against the metal, as though if he concentrated hard enough, he could still hear Shiro on the other side.

He couldn’t bring himself to break the illusion, to take one of the bikes out alone. It was the first time in recent memory that the idea of flying felt empty, incapable of fixing anything.

Retracing his steps, he somehow found himself at the garages. From there, it didn’t take much effort to locate Shiro’s car. He tested the door, huffing out a quiet laugh when it slid open at his touch, unlocked.

“Shiro,” he said softly, climbing into the driver’s seat. The interior was clean and impersonal; he set his hands on the steering wheel, anyway, imagining he could feel Shiro’s there.

He didn’t intend to steal it.

***

The sun was hanging low in the sky when Keith heard the long-expected rumble of an engine. He didn’t bother standing; whoever the Garrison had sent would find him soon enough.

Tires crunched over the rocky terrain at the entrance of the valley where his tracks had so conspicuously led. The vehicle pulled up next to his, idling for a bit before the door slid open, a grey-uniformed officer stepping out.

“You’re not who I expected,” Keith said, when the footsteps stopped near him, the highly-polished boots flattening scrubby vegetation Keith had been keeping company for the last hour or so, since he’d tired of driving in aimless loops, waiting for a chase that never came. The nearest boot shifted, and Keith reached to pluck a crushed blossom free. It drooped, its purple, thickly-petaled head too heavy for its bruised stem to continue holding upright.

“Iverson won’t forgive this one,” Adam said.

Keith tore a petal loose, letting it fall from his fingers.

_He’s gone._

“I didn’t think he would,” Keith said.

A second petal fluttered, catching a brief updraft, then plummeting.

_He’s still out there._

Adam shifted on his feet again, then lowered himself to the ground, brushing ineffectually at the dirt first as though he could scrub it free of sand. “It’s a nice spot,” he said. “Is this somewhere you came with him?”

“No,” Keith said. Another petal, following the inevitable pull of gravity.

_They must’ve lost contact long before telling us; it was an important mission for the Garrison, too. Their search came up empty._

“He cared a lot about you,” Adam said. “I know...” He stopped, his voice suddenly thick. He touched the stalk of the wide-branching plant next to him, then jerked his fingers away, seemingly deterred by the bristly texture. Wildflowers had their defense mechanisms, too, the kind of resilience you needed to survive out here.

_Find him._

Adam watched the petal spiral, joining the others.

“I know it’s hard to think rationally right now. You’re self-destructing; Iverson doesn’t get it, but I do.”

Keith ripped the next three petals away in one violent motion.

_The ship’s destroyed; no one could survive in open space._

_They lied about what caused it. What if they’re hiding something else?_

_It’ll only hurt more if you don’t accept it now._

“I got a call from the guardhouse. They checked the tapes after you went through; I imagine they’ll get a dressing-down for letting you past in the first place. Probably for reporting it to me, too, before they called it in on official channels.”

That caught Keith’s attention. “Iverson didn’t send you?”

“I’m not Takashi,” Adam said. “He had this way with people...you know what he was like. He was able to see absolutely anyone else’s point of view—and then convince them to see his. He’d listen and listen, pulling in as much information as he could possibly gather, and then he’d make up his mind, and that’d be it. Once he’d decided, there was no point in trying to talk him out of anything.”

The next petal had a gentler descent, with a softer message.

_Believe in him. If anyone could make it out there, he would._

Adam picked up a small, round stone, rolling it through his fingers. “What I’m saying is that the best I could do was ask to be the one to bring you back. I owe Takashi that much.”

_Even if he had survived the crash, there’s nothing you can do. It would take months to reach him, in a spacecraft not even the Garrison has ready to launch._

“So what happens now?”

Adam dropped the stone into the pile Keith was creating as he tore the petals faster, in time with his whirring thoughts. “How old are you? Eighteen?”

“Nearly,” Keith said.

“As far as I know, they won’t be pursuing any kind of charges. The vehicle’s still in one piece, and I don’t think the chance of additional publicity is something the Garrison’s interested in.” He adjusted the cuff of his uniform jacket, a movement familiar enough that they both froze.

When Keith lifted his head, his eyes met Adam’s. There was pain mirrored in them—a sense of loss that echoed through Keith’s chest. Adam looked away first.

“So they’ll just kick me out,” Keith concluded. “Send me back to the Home for a few more months.”

He’d known this was the most likely outcome; he’d watched the Garrison disappearing in the rearview mirror, dust billowing behind his speeding tires, _wanting_ someone to make him feel anything other than this endless, gut-wrenching anguish.

_Don’t give up._

There was one more petal left on the stem.

“You could try to argue your case,” Adam said. “With Takashi gone, they need...you’re the best pilot they’ve got.”

Some of the helplessness dissipated, burned away by Keith’s fury that anyone could be seen as a _replacement_ for Shiro. “I’m not going back,” he snarled, flinging the flower to the ground. “Not to the Garrison, and not to the Home.”

“I have to take you back,” Adam said. “You and the car. I’ll be towing it; obviously you can’t be trusted to drive it from here. It was hard enough to get Iverson to agree to send me alone. But...” He hesitated, seeming to struggle with an internal decision.

Keith waited.

Adam pressed briefly at the bridge of his glasses. “I can’t be held responsible for what happens to you once my part of the deal is done. It might take me ten minutes or so to make sure the vehicles are stowed and to report back.”

“Understood,” Keith said. He rose to his feet, brushing the sand off his uniform pants; this would be the last time he wore them.

They were quiet on the drive back. Keith stared out the passenger window, lining up what he’d need. The way out was simple; on foot, he could easily scale a wall and be gone before anyone noticed. It was more difficult to envision what came next. He could get a job, maybe in a mechanic’s shop, until he had enough money to figure something else out. He might even be able to fix up a bike of his own.

Adam flashed his badge at the guardhouse, and Keith unclicked his seatbelt as soon as they were through.

“Not yet,” Adam said.

When they reached the vehicle bay, Adam cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable but resolute, his face drawn and tired. It must’ve been an incredibly long day for him, Keith thought, in an unexpected flare of sympathy.

“The thing I’ll probably never forgive myself for,” Adam said, “was that I didn’t get to say goodbye.” He gazed out the windshield, at the launch pad—empty now, but still a towering presence. “I know you were with him before he left. How was he?”

Keith let that morning flood through his mind, drawing each snapshot forward, making sure it was still intact, that he’d carry these moments with him for the rest of his life. The brilliance of Shiro’s smile, the strength in his arms, the warm pressure of his hand on Keith’s shoulder. The fact that once the mission clock had started, when they had to part ways, Keith forced to retreat behind the observation fencing, Shiro hadn’t looked back. Not once.

“He was happy,” Keith said.

Adam pressed his lips together, then gave a curt nod. “Good luck, Keith,” he said.

It took Keith under six minutes to reach his room, strip out of his uniform, and change into his civilian clothes, strapping his knife to his belt and pulling on his fingerless gloves.

He left everything else behind. The books, his tablet—any of the Garrison-provided supplies had never belonged to him. He ducked his head into the corridor, then slipped away, unseen and probably largely forgotten by everyone there.

He’d made it out of the Garrison and most of the way to town before he touched his pocket, an automatic, self-comforting gesture that made him stop in his tracks. He didn’t have it. In his rush, leaving his uniform crumpled on the floor, he hadn’t retrieved Shiro’s card.

He nearly turned back.

It was the only object that still linked him to the Garrison—to Shiro. To the day they’d met, to everything that had come after.

There was a possibility, no matter how slight, that he’d be able to stay. One day, in a couple years, maybe less, he might be at the launch pad again, this time readying his own ship. It was his dream, wasn’t it? Blasting away from this planet, leading a mission—those were ideas that had kept him slogging through the Garrison’s attempts to transform him into one of their picture-perfect pilots. If he wanted that future, he had to act on it now.

A car approached—civilian, not Garrison—and Keith took several steps to the side to ensure he was fully out of the roadway. The handle of his knife bumped against his hip. He reached to adjust it, the movement calling his attention to the soft comfort of his gloves—a gift that Shiro had chosen specifically for him, that he’d watched Keith unwrap, his smile flickering until he was certain Keith liked them as much as he’d hoped.

Keith clenched his hands into fists, breathing through the sting of that memory.

Without Shiro, the Garrison would be unbearable.

He checked the road and continued on his way, each step feeling more right than the one before. He’d made his choice. All he could do now was see where it led.


	3. Chapter 3

“Giant robot lions,” Hunk said. He shook his head, then repeated, “ _Giant_ _robot_ _lions_ that transform into an even bigger robot man. Soooo that's a thing, who knew.”

“Technically,” Pidge said, pushing her glasses up her nose, “they're giant lion-shaped _spaceships_ , which, when triggered by a _genius-level_ combination of Altean technology and, apparently, magic, although isn't all science just—”

“Point is, they're freakin’ _amazing_ ,” Lance interrupted, loudly, with an obnoxious flap of his spindly arms.

He looked like one of those floppy tube men outside car dealerships, Keith thought, then snorted and turned to share the thought with Shiro.

 _Big Bo’s_ , he mouthed, with a subtle lift of his hands and a slight jerk of his head in Lance’s direction. Combination dealership and repair shop, it was an institution in Plaht City—an unforgettable eyesore that stretched over more than half a city block. At one point, there’d been a massive searchlight installation, with crisscrossing beams blasting the night sky every time Bo wanted to announce a sale—or simply felt like turning them on. The Garrison had, understandably, objected, citing interference with their jets’ flight patterns.

That’d turned out to be a particularly fortunate occurrence for Keith. Bo had hired him on the spot; his long-standing grudge against the Garrison meant that he looked fondly on anyone who defied its rules. Getting booted was a high mark in Keith’s favor.

Shiro couldn't quite hide the twitch of his lips or the eyeroll. He definitely got the reference. He covered for it by sliding into the Leader Voice he’d been sticking to around the team. It was his default around people he didn't know well, a persona he must’ve had to develop once he realized how quickly others fell into his orbit, looking to him for guidance that he never seemed to be able to refuse.

“Great job today, guys,” he said. “We’re really starting to get the hang of it. With more practice, forming Voltron should become like second nature.”

The other three paladins groaned in unison, Lance dramatically falling backwards on the couch—into Hunk, who yelped in surprise but caught him.

“C’mon, man,” Hunk said. “Haven’t we practiced enough for today? I’m exhausted.”

“I suppose we could use a break,” Shiro allowed. “Everybody, meet back here in two...vargas.”

“How about two quintents,” Lance muttered. “That’s the right measurement, right? Pidge?”

“Quintants. That’d be roughly equivalent to two days,” Pidge said, facedown on the far section of the couch, limbs outflung and voice muffled. “Excessive, but right now I agree.”

Keith tuned everyone out, vaulting over the back of the couch to follow Shiro as he left the lounge. They took several turns through the Castle’s mazelike hallways, Keith casting about for suggestions of what they could do while they waited for the others to be ready again. Training deck? Dig into the archives at the Castle’s library? Take the opportunity to explore a bit more of the grounds outside?

“I was thinking,” he started, eager, the energy sapped by their work with the Lions rushing back now that he had Shiro with him again.

Shiro interrupted—something he very rarely did. “Keith, I’m just gonna head to my room for a bit. Can we talk later?”

Keith’s steps faltered; the unexpected brushoff stung. “Okay, sure,” he said. It was true that Shiro had said he’d wanted to rest, away from the others. Keith simply hadn’t thought that included him.

“I’ll see you later, then,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets and deciding the training deck would definitely be his next stop.

If he hadn’t looked back—if he didn’t always look back before leaving Shiro—he would’ve missed it. Shiro’s shoulders dropping, his swift, steady footsteps slowing, the fingers of his right hand—his Galra hand—clenching, as he appeared to favor that arm.

“Shiro,” Keith said, back at his side in an instant. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

Indecision flickered over Shiro’s face—an expression that Keith recognized. He was deciding whether to trust him with this. Whether, after everything they’d been through, he was going to try to shut Keith out.

“Is it your arm?” Keith asked, unwilling to let that happen.

The tension in Shiro’s features smoothed. He lifted his Galra arm, twisting it one direction, then the other, peering intently at it. “I guess it is now,” he said, wryly.

Keith gave him a flat, unamused look.

Shiro sighed, a furrow digging between his eyebrows again as he flexed his hand, curling his fingers into his palm—slowly, one by one, like he was getting used to the movements. “It’s still strange. I...I don’t even know how long I’ve had it. I don’t remember _why_. If I lost my arm; if they were just...experimenting.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Yeah,” Shiro said, softly, an admission he clearly didn’t want to make. “Not a lot. It’s this constant, dull ache. Like when you’ve been carrying something heavy for longer than you should. But I can’t...it’s my arm now. I can’t put it down.”

Keith’s instincts kicked in, demanding that he _do something_ , that he fix this for Shiro. But there was nothing here for him to fight. It was just Shiro. Standing in the hallway of an alien structure on an alien planet, with a metal arm that seemed to function exactly like a human one but served as a constant reminder of what Shiro had been through.

He made a conscious effort to calm his breathing, to think through this. “What about the technology here? The healing pods. Or Hunk. Pidge. They might know what to do.”

“ _No_ ,” Shiro said, his tone sharp. He squeezed his hand into a fist and shut his eyes, pain tightening his jaw. “No,” he said again, after a visible internal struggle. “I don’t want anyone knowing. Not right now. Not—I’m not really in the mood to be poked and prodded at.”

 _Not again_ was implied.

Anger boiled under Keith’s skin. He'd track down every person—every _creature—_ who’d ever laid a finger on Shiro. He’d make them pay for what they'd done. Then he'd take the battle to the heart of the Galra Empire: he'd destroy Zarkon. He'd make sure this never happened to anyone again.

“Maybe you shouldn't activate it anymore,” Keith said, thinking of the purple light blazing along Shiro's arm, the physical toll it must take to use his body as a weapon.

“I have to,” Shiro said. “We’re at war.” He turned to Keith, his eyes narrowed in thought. “Besides, it's not that. Sometimes the pain spikes, like I'm burning all the way to my shoulder, but it's not necessarily when I... _activate_ it, like you said. It's almost an echo—phantom pain, maybe. From when I lost it.”

“You said you didn’t remember how it happened. How’re your memories doing otherwise?” Keith asked, worry lacing through the words.

Shiro didn't like to talk about that, either, but the gaps were evident. He'd lost much more than a limb over the past year. While he'd always kept certain things close to his chest, he was quieter than before. Always on alert—rarely smiling. He felt distant, even from Keith, like he'd set new barriers in place to protect himself. Keith wasn't sure how to get past them anymore—or if he was still allowed.

Keith had more than a little experience in pushing people away; he recognized the signs of self-preservation, of presenting yourself as a certain type of person to hide what was going on underneath. Shiro had been the one to persist, back when they’d first met—before Keith knew how much their lives would entwine.

It was his turn now.

Shiro didn’t respond right away. He shook his head in frustration, his stark white bangs swinging with the movement. _Stress-bleached_ , Keith thought. Shiro had more scars than the one cutting across the bridge of his nose. The worst ones probably weren't even physical.

“It's coming back, but slowly. Only in pieces. Sometimes I'll almost have one—I can _see_ it, can nearly grasp it—but it slips away when I try. The harder I fight to remember certain things, the more they resist.”

“You don't have to rush it. You have time,” Keith said.

Shiro gave him a wordless look, one that carried a meaning Keith wished he didn’t know how to interpret.

_Do I?_

“We’ll figure this out,” Keith insisted. “You know I'm here for you, Shiro. Whatever you need.”

Shiro's grim expression softened; for a moment, past the hair and the scar and the bulk he'd put on during his year in the gladiator arena, he still looked like the man who’d said goodbye to Keith. _His_ Shiro. The one Keith still, sometimes, felt like he'd lost forever.

***

There wasn’t time to talk on the way back from the Blade of Marmora base. Keith wasn’t sure what he’d say, anyway.

His knife—his _blade—_ had proved the fears that’d been dogging his steps since he’d seen the symbol on Sendak’s ship. He wasn’t human. Not entirely. Worse: out of all the planets, all the beings in the universe, his bloodline connected him to the ones who’d spent thousands of years methodically spreading terror and destruction. Who’d wiped out the entire Altean race for standing in their way. Who’d enslaved the Balmerans and countless others. Who’d hurt Shiro.

Shiro should’ve hated him for it—like Allura did. But, when it came time for them to split off into their separate missions, Shiro unflinchingly held his gaze, then drew him into a hug far tighter than the one they’d shared back on Earth.

 _It’s okay_ , the hug conveyed, Shiro’s arms momentarily shielding him from the rest of the world. _I’m here. I still care._

“ _Thank you_ ,” Keith murmured, not sure if Shiro could even hear him—or feel the movement of his lips, pressed into Shiro's shoulder. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that Shiro hadn’t walked away.

When they parted from the hug—reluctantly, on Keith’s side—they kept their eyes locked for a few moments. He couldn’t fully decipher what Shiro was silently telling him now—more of the same, probably. Reassurance that being Galra didn’t change who Keith was. But there was something else to it, a depth that Keith wished he had the space to explore.

Shiro had been giving him that expression more often of late; it made something funny swim in Keith’s stomach, a squirm of uncertainty and odd hope. There was something about it that felt... _different_ from how Shiro had always looked at him before. Unguarded fondness, mixed with what seemed like almost startled admiration, like he was seeing Keith in a light he hadn’t expected.

The problem was that while Keith couldn’t pick apart every nuance of what those looks meant, he could pinpoint when they’d started.

 _It felt right, seeing you in the Black Lion_ , Shiro had said, his hand still pressed against the deep slashes in his side. He hadn’t let Keith examine them—not that he’d know what to do, with his medical training limited to an introductory course at the Garrison, which had stuck to medpacks and first aid and hadn’t exactly covered magical glowing wounds.

 _I was just borrowing your Lion_ , Keith had said, glaring at the purple seeping through Shiro’s fingers. _We were working together to save you._

That was all it’d been: Shiro’s Lion responding to Keith’s panic over his safety. Their mutual concern had created a temporary connection, allowing them to put things back in their rightful places. Shiro with his Lion, and Keith doing everything he could to make sure Shiro was okay.

For some reason, Shiro had gotten stuck on the idea after that. And maybe that’s all this particular expression boiled down to—Shiro’s infuriating insistence that Keith take on the leadership mantle if anything happened to him.

It wasn’t a thought worth pursuing. Nothing was going to happen to Shiro. Not while Keith was around to stop it.

“We’re actually gonna do it,” Hunk said as they entered the wormhole—his voice filled with awe and the tiniest hint of fear. “Can you believe it? Once we’ve got all the pieces together, we’ll be able to stop Zarkon for good. Then we can finally go _home_.”

Keith half-listened to the rest, which seemed to be mostly composed of Hunk excitedly listing all the dishes he’d make once he had access to Earth ingredients again, with a few names of what must’ve been family members dropped into the mix.

Keith’s mind was still back on the Castle. When they’d paused at the top of the Yellow Lion’s gangplank to wave once more at the team waiting below, Pidge had pushed her glasses up to wipe away tears; Allura had avoided Keith’s gaze. And Shiro. Shiro had stood in the midst of them, watching, his expression open and soft, as though he was still holding Keith from that distance.

“Home,” Keith said quietly. He wasn’t sure he had the slightest idea anymore what that meant.

***

“Thought I might find you here.”

The words were accompanied by a warm grip on Keith’s shoulder, a touch that immediately calmed his anxious thoughts.

“Shiro. I didn’t hear you coming.”

“Sorry,” Shiro said. There was a space after the apology, a recognition of yet another familiar element that had changed while he was away. He’d gotten lighter on his feet out of necessity; a wrong step in the arena could’ve meant the difference between literal life and death. It wasn’t easy to relax the Champion-instilled habits now that he was safe with Voltron—because he wasn’t safe, was he? He, and the rest of the universe, wouldn’t be until they’d defeated Zarkon.

When Shiro let go, Keith shivered, as if from a sudden chill. He turned away from the observation deck screen—wide, curving across an entire wall of the room, and one of his favorite spots in the Castle—so he could see Shiro’s face.

“I figured you’d still be on the bridge,” Keith said. “Working out final details.”

“We’ve planned everything we can for right now. Slav’s still working on the gravity generator.”

“So you needed to take a breather.”

Shiro heaved out a sigh, his annoyance audible. “I don’t know what it is about him that gets to me.”

Keith had a few ideas, none that he wanted to say aloud. The simplest was that Slav’s outlook was diametrically opposed to Shiro’s. Shiro was, at his core, a man of action. He’d spent most of his life working past obstacles that’d been thrown in his way. He didn’t believe in limitations. Someone like Slav, who became paralyzed by indecision, who could see any number of potential outcomes and chose to focus only on the negative ones, would inevitably grate on a man who pushed through crippling fear, trauma, and physical pain every day of his life. Who’d heard _you can’t do this_ so many times that the words had become meaningless.

If you told Shiro something was impossible, it only cemented his determination to prove you wrong.

Slav—and the time he’d spent being tortured at Beta Traz—must’ve served as a reminder of a lot of things Shiro had done his best to move past. They’d both endured the cruelty of the Galra Empire. Keith didn’t know what kind of person that level of relentless torment would’ve turned him into. It’d apparently heightened Slav’s anxiety and had condensed Shiro into a tougher, more formidable version of himself. The way he reacted to Slav, though—and to Sendak, with his taunts and an eerily familiar Galra-powered arm—made Keith suspect that Shiro wasn’t as hardened by the experience as he tried to appear.

He’d run across Shiro in this room—alone, late at night, sleepless and on alert—far more often than either of them spoke about. Keith’s biology probably accounted for his limited need for sleep—four hours a night had always been more than sufficient—but this was new for Shiro. Shiro had regularly dragged himself out of bed before sunrise at the Garrison not because he was naturally predisposed but because, as he’d put it, _We miss too much of the world when we’re asleep, Keith_.

He didn’t seem to be drawing enjoyment out of these extra hours. He wasn’t learning or exploring or roping Keith into expeditions that were technically against the rules. Now, it was like he was waiting for something. Bracing himself for a future that...Keith shied away from the thought, refusing yet again to acknowledge the dark shadow that’d been hanging over his dreams.

“The plan’s going to work, Shiro,” he said, pouring all his belief—in Voltron, in the team, in _Shiro_ —into the statement.

Shiro didn’t reply. If anyone else had been around, he would’ve said something intensely encouraging: a genuine, heartfelt speech that’d make them all trust in their own potential, eager to band together to save the day. He and Allura were similar in that regard. Others looked to them for leadership. For inspiration.

Keith just saw his best friend.

“Do you remember, back on Earth...” Shiro eventually started—an opening that made Keith jerk his head up in surprise. Whether intentional or not, Shiro rarely brought up their shared past. Keith had figured he didn’t want to dwell on it. There were parts he’d certainly prefer not to discuss, either. The circumstances around both of their departures from the Garrison, for example.

“I remember a lot of things,” Keith said.

Shiro made an amused noise—one Keith hadn't heard in a long time. “This room...it always reminds me.” He gave Keith a quiet, searching look, then gazed out at the dark expanse of space, studded by brilliant stars. “It takes months to get to Kerberos. At least, with the technology that Earth has. We were assigned tasks to keep our brains active—to keep from going stir-crazy. But there was still a lot of time to think. Time to just look out at the stars.”

“They’re different from up here,” Keith said. “I don't think I'll ever get tired of it.”

Shiro’s eyes were silvery-grey; from certain angles, they seemed to shimmer in the room’s aqua lighting—set low to reduce the glare on the screen. It made the stars feel closer, as though he and Shiro were simply two more points of light in a vast universe.

 _It almost feels like you could touch them_ , Shiro had said, stopping outside the shed, his face turned up to the velvety-dark sky.

They’d risen long before the sun that morning, intending to make it back to the Garrison before it was fully light out. There was no sense in lingering; they had no food, no coffee, and no real need to pick up where they’d left off the night before. Shiro had fallen asleep first, so quietly that it’d taken Keith a while to realize. He’d pushed Shiro, bleary and protesting, onto the couch, then buried himself in a blanket nest on the floor. It was more practical to sleep in the same room, he’d told himself. If one lantern went out, they’d have the other within easy reach; there’d be no stumbling around upstairs or attempting to air out long-stale beds.

And that way, Keith could hear Shiro breathing. Could startle awake and hold his own breath for long enough to hear the couch creaking slightly as Shiro moved in his sleep, letting Keith know that he was still there. That he hadn’t, somehow, simply disappeared in the middle of the night. That the entire evening hadn’t been a dream.

 _I like it out here_ , Keith had said, joining Shiro, forgetting their hoverbikes for the moment. _Makes me feel more settled in my own skin._

 _I can see that_ , Shiro had said. _Open horizon. No one around to hold you back._

 _It’s nice being alone_ , Keith had said, glad Shiro understood this about him, too.

Shiro had given him a wry look that it’d taken Keith a few seconds to interpret. When he’d realized it was meant as an apology— _sorry for intruding in your space_ —he’d snorted and shaken his head.

_Doesn’t count when it’s you, Shiro._

“Do you ever get homesick?” Shiro asked, pulling Keith back to where they stood, farther from Earth than he’d ever imagined possible.

It was a reasonable question, but Keith felt his mouth flatten unhappily. How much of the Kerberos flight had Shiro spent thinking of what he’d left behind? What memories, what hopes had he clung to when he was fighting in the arena? Was he missing Adam now?

He bit back the instinctive reply— _no, what’s left for me there?—_ and let the question sit long enough for his thoughts to settle.

“There are some parts I guess I’ll always miss. But it never really felt like I belonged there. And now I know why.”

“You’re still human, Keith.” Shiro’s attention was fully back on him now. “Even if you weren’t, you’d always have a place on Earth, for as long as you wanted it.”

Keith didn’t attempt to argue; this wasn’t a debate he’d ever win, not with Shiro digging his heels in. Besides, that wasn’t entirely what he’d meant. Considering everything Shiro had been through, he couldn’t share the rest of his thoughts—the guilt he felt, sometimes, about being in the middle of a war and... _enjoying_ it. Not the battles. Not the pain and devastation that they witnessed on every planet they freed.

But some days, he felt happier than he’d ever remembered being. He loved the connection he had with Red, their minds so effortlessly linked that flying finally felt as natural as he’d always known it should. He loved being with Shiro, exploring space with him to a degree he’d never even dared to dream.

He’d miss the teamwork when Voltron disbanded; all of them, including Allura and Coran, had become a sort of family. The closest thing he’d probably ever have to one, anyway.

Touching the hilt of his knife, he thought of the symbol that he didn’t have to keep hidden any longer. If he followed his heart after all of this was done—if he could start tracking down clues of what might’ve happened to his mom—would Shiro consider going with him?

He got as far as saying Shiro’s name. The rest stuck in his throat; he wasn’t sure he was ready to handle the answer.

“Thanks,” he said instead. “For...believing in me still. After everything.”

Shiro gave him a slightly puzzled look. “Why wouldn’t I? You’re the same person you’ve always been, Keith.”

“Not everyone’s so sure about that.”

“Allura just needs time,” Shiro said. “She hasn’t...” He stopped, his expression hardening, tight with the experiences he ordinarily kept to himself. “Altea was destroyed ten thousand years ago, but to her, it’s been months. That level of loss, and having to spend every day locked in battle with the empire that caused it—I don’t think she’s had a chance to process any of her emotions.”

“Neither have you,” Keith said. Shiro had finally made it back to Earth, only to be catapulted into space again, forced to lead the universe’s greatest weapon. It wasn’t a responsibility he would’ve ever turned down, but he hadn’t exactly had a choice in the matter.

Shiro shook his head. “It’s not the same.”

“You were gone for more than a year,” Keith said, his voice grating over the words. “Your hair—your arm. The scars. They did this to you. People like me.”

“No,” Shiro said. “Keith, that’s not true. I’ve never once thought that.”

Keith’s throat was too thick to say anything else. He lifted his eyes to Shiro’s, uncertain at first what he’d find there. He was met by the same steady kindness that Shiro had always shown him, although there was a hint of sadness mixed in now.

“I’ve experienced the good in the Galra firsthand,” Shiro said. His mouth twisted a bit at the double meaning; they both looked down as he flexed his fingers—a smooth, utterly human movement, glinting silver under the lights.

“Ulaz,” Keith said. He’d saved all of them—Shiro twice now. Keith would always be grateful to him for that.

“Ulaz,” Shiro echoed, sorrow coating the name, conveying his deep regret over that loss. “Without him, I wouldn’t be here today. And we have Kolivan working with us now; even Allura’s had to admit he’s an invaluable ally. Your blood—what you’re born with—doesn’t determine what you do with your life. We know that better than anyone, Keith.”

“Defying the odds,” Keith said, drawing out a partial smile in response—an expression that didn’t cross Shiro’s features often anymore.

“It’s what we do,” Shiro said.

They lapsed into silence. Shiro appeared to be wrestling with something; he opened and shut his mouth twice, glancing at Keith once, then biting his lip in thought.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Keith said eventually.

Shiro huffed out a quiet breath. “Sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t figure out exactly how to put this. I’ve been meaning to bring it up since the Trials.”

“What is it?” Keith asked, when Shiro still seemed reluctant to begin.

“Did Kolivan talk to you about it after?”

“What it means to be a Blade? A little.” Keith had gotten a very condensed summary, along with an offer of additional training that he hadn’t decided whether to take. It’d require leaving the team for potentially lengthy stretches, so it was a moot point for the moment.

“Not that,” Shiro said. “Although I’m glad they’ve recognized your value, Keith. I was wondering if you’d discussed the Trials themselves; what happened to you during them. The virtual mindscape.”

Oh. That. Keith felt his face heat—hopefully not visibly enough for Shiro to notice. He’d assumed this would be one of those things that neither of them ever mentioned. “Yes,” he said stiffly. “My...greatest hopes and fears. He told me that what I saw in there wasn’t real. And that you were both able to see what I was visualizing.” Meaning that Shiro had watched him stumble over a near-confession, after conjuring a version of him from thin air.

“Good,” Shiro said, looking somewhat relieved that he didn’t have to be the one to break the news. “I thought, with your dad, you’d be able to put the pieces together regardless, but that shouldn’t have happened. It was wrong of them to throw you into that situation without any warning.”

Keith shrugged uncomfortably. “They all go through it. It’s like our Voltron exercises; in order to trust someone to be a part of the team, you have to know what’s going on in each other’s heads. No big secrets.”

“We all have our secrets,” Shiro said, frowning, his eyes dark with whatever he still kept unspoken. “The difference is that with Voltron, we each made a conscious decision to open our minds to each other.”

“I would’ve done it anyway.” Keith had spent a lot of time thinking through that experience; as physically and emotionally painful as it had been, he wouldn’t have backed out. He had to know who he was—where he belonged. He didn’t have all the answers yet, but he’d gotten a few steps closer.

Shiro scrutinized him—probably checking for nonverbal cues that Keith meant it—then nodded slowly. “Okay,” he said.

It would’ve been easy to leave it there—but Shiro had been the one to open the door, and Keith wasn’t quite ready to shut it. “Why?” he asked. _Why bring it up now? Why was this so important to you? What would you have done if I’d said I wasn’t okay with how it’d all turned out?_ Shiro had been prepared to toss the alliance away for Keith; perhaps he wasn’t convinced they’d made the right decision.

Shiro glanced behind them, as if to check that they were still alone. Not a topic he was comfortable with either, then. He spoke before Keith had a chance to retract the question.

“I know what it’s like to have my brain messed with. To not fully trust my own memory; to see and react to things that aren’t really there.”

“Sendak,” Keith said, and Shiro lifted his shoulders slightly, affirming that he was at least partially correct.

 _Wait, so you’re saying you JETTISONED him? Into space? Wow_ , Hunk had said, looking both impressed and slightly wary of Shiro. _Didn’t we...need him? For answers and stuff?_

 _The Castle was trying to kill us! You can’t blame Shiro for freaking out for a second,_ Lance had interjected, making sense for perhaps the first time in his life. Keith had reluctantly, with a considerable amount of annoyance, sided with him.

Not that it was necessary; Shiro had refused to listen to any further discussion.

 _I made the best decision I could for the team_ , he’d said, colder and more crisply impersonal than Keith had ever heard him. _He was poisoning the Castle. What’s done is done. We need to move on. Pidge, what have you found from his downloaded memories?_

Shiro only shut down like that when something was really bothering him. Sendak had gotten into his head to a degree Keith had never witnessed before; there was definitely more to it, but Shiro was shifting on his feet now, visibly gearing up to close off this line of communication and push the focus away from himself again.

“I should head back to the bridge; see if there’s anything else I can do to help,” he said briskly, as though he hadn’t been the one to come in search of Keith. Was that all he’d wanted? To make sure Keith hadn’t been traumatized by the experience?

He had to know some of what Keith felt. He’d seen at the Blade of Marmora base. He knew that when the chips were down, when Keith was at his most desperate, the only thing he ever wanted was to see Shiro’s face.

Keith breathed in, then let the air gust out of his lungs. If he didn’t say it now, he never would. “Shiro, I—”

“Keith?” Shiro asked, when he didn’t finish the sentence.

He couldn’t do it. Keith would rather face Zarkon head-on, with no backup in sight, than watch Shiro stumble through an earnest, gentle rejection that could ruin the simplicity of future moments like this.

“Good luck out there,” he said instead.

A smile broke over Shiro’s face, illuminating the entire room, sending warmth coursing through Keith’s body.

“I don't need luck, Keith,” he said. “Not when you've got my back.”

***

“Please,” Keith whispered. There was no one to respond: just a debris field, Red, and screens that blinked silently at him, telling him nothing had changed since the last time he’d scoured this area.

He tried anyway, day after day, convinced that he’d missed something. That Shiro had, against all logic, somehow been ejected from his Lion, then found shelter in the ruins of a Galra cruiser.

 _Even if that were true, it’s been well over a phoeb now_ , Allura had said one of the many times he’d returned empty-handed.

He’d flung his helmet across Red’s hangar in frustration, storming away before it cracked against the far wall. Since then, no one had attempted to reason with him. They were waiting for him to realize the endless searching was pointless—that Shiro wasn’t out there, waiting to be found.

“I know,” he told Red, his voice shattering around the words.

That didn’t mean he was ready to stop looking.

On days like this, the training deck was his refuge; after enough bouts with the droids, he could focus on the ache in his muscles, rather than the hollowed out space in his chest.

“Start training level eight; add droid,” he called, swiping his sweat-soaked hair away from his forehead. A hiss signaled the droids’ arrival; he fell into a defensive crouch as they dropped from panels in the ceiling, rapidly calculating which he’d need to attack first.

It was taking longer than usual to calm his mind. He cut through one droid, its seemingly solid form disintegrating into a swarm of pixels, and pivoted to catch the other’s blade on his bayard. His reactions were slowing; he was pushing himself too hard, too fast, his muscles burning with the effort, but he gritted his teeth, throwing his weight against the droid’s superior mass.

 _You can’t win that way,_ Shiro had said during one of their sparring sessions at the Garrison, easily knocking Keith off his feet for probably the tenth time that afternoon. _You keep forgetting that I’m taller than you are, and quite a few pounds heavier._

Keith had feigned exhaustion; as soon as Shiro’s guard appeared to drop, he’d coiled for another quick strike, attempting to catch him off-balance, but Shiro had anticipated the move.

When Keith had hit the mat again, groaning at the impact, he’d stayed down.

 _Haven’t forgotten,_ he’d said, his rough voice with irritation. _Can’t exactly gain any weight in the next five minutes, though._

Shiro had extended his hand, pulling Keith up in one smooth movement. _It’s not about matching your opponent’s size. You’re faster than I am, Keith. You’re ambidextrous and incredibly flexible. Stop trying to fight like me. You’ve got your own style. Use it to your advantage._

 _Stay mobile and keep my distance_ , Keith had recited.

Shiro had tapped him gently in the center of his forehead. _You remember the words, but when we start sparring, you throw all your training out the window. Don’t let me get close, Keith. Once I’ve got you within reach, my strength’s on my side._

 _Okay_. Keith had taken a few steps back, dancing lightly on his toes, lifting his fists back into position. _I’m ready. Let’s do this._

He’d focused on his breathing in that round, circling Shiro, darting in for swift, high kicks, followed by quick jabs—right fist, then left, before Shiro had a chance to counter.

 _Good_ , Shiro had grunted, after one particularly well-aimed kick to his hip had nearly taken out his center of gravity. _You’re learning, Keith. Keep going. You’ve got this._

“I’ve got this,” Keith muttered. He shifted his balance, switching to a left-handed grip on his bayard so he could draw his knife. Crossing both his blades against the droid’s sword, he generated enough leverage to force it back—giving him an opening to twist out of the droid’s reach, then spin back in, slicing across its abdomen before it could recalibrate its attack.

“End training sequence,” he panted. He’d gotten too reckless at the end, relying on the endurance he’d been building over the past few months. There was no guarantee that technique would’ve worked against a living opponent, particularly one who already knew he had two weapons. He deactivated his bayard, sheathed his knife, and lifted the hem of his shirt to mop the sweat off his face.

“There are towels for that,” Pidge called. “Not that I’m one to judge, but I think you’re just spreading it around at this point.”

He turned to find Pidge sitting cross-legged at the end of the room. “How long have you been there?”

“Came in during that last round. Nice move, by the way. You should duel-wield more often.”

Keith shrugged noncommittally, accepting the praise and filing the suggestion away. It’d require reworking some of his fighting strategy, but it wasn’t a bad idea. He’d ask Shiro what he thought when—

“Hey, are you okay?” Pidge started to rise to her feet, her eyes big and worried behind her glasses, but Keith shook his head, waving her down.

“Just...caught me off guard,” he gasped after a few seconds, when the agony tearing through his stomach had lessened enough to let the words out.

“Are you injured? Or—ohhh,” Pidge said. “Yeah. Sometimes it feels like someone’s punched you right in the gut, doesn’t it.”

Keith straightened up, prepared to leave the room and never talk about this again. Not with Pidge. Not with anyone. He glanced at her, intending to cut things off with a curt nod and something along the lines of _see you later_.

Pidge had removed her glasses and was carefully wiping each lens with the edge of her sleeve. Her hands were trembling—barely, but enough for Keith to notice.

He sat down next to her and waited while she folded and unfolded the thin wire frames, then put them back on.

“Do you actually need those?” he asked.

She frowned and pushed them up her nose. They were a little too big for her face and always slipped, needing regular adjustment to keep them in place. “What d’you mean?”

“I remember you,” he said. “You didn’t wear them before. They’re your brother’s, aren’t they.”

Pidge twisted her fingers together in her lap. “I always wondered why you or Shiro didn’t say anything. I thought maybe you didn’t recognize me, with my hair and all. You especially; we only talked that one time. At the launch.”

“Wasn’t thinking about it at first,” Keith admitted. He’d been too wrapped up in other concerns: getting Shiro back, figuring out what had happened to him while he was away, dealing with suddenly being on the front lines of an intergalactic war. And Shiro had even more going on in his head—plenty of reasons to not ask questions about the pint-sized paladin with an uncanny resemblance to Matt Holt.

Once Keith had connected the dots, long before she’d officially told the group, it still hadn’t really mattered to him. Pidge Gunderson probably had reasons for dropping the name Katie Holt; it hadn’t been his business to corner her and ask why.

“That wasn’t the only place I’ve seen you,” he said, the memory drifting back now. “Didn’t you get kicked out of the Garrison once?”

“A couple times,” Pidge said. “Which one were you around for?”

She’d been marched down the corridor to Iverson’s office—small and defiant, her head held high. Keith had slipped away before he could be caught lurking outside. He’d heard enough, anyway.

“I guess you were supposed to be discussing flower arrangements instead of trying to hack into the Garrison’s systems. Your mom was pushing pretty hard for wreaths.”

Pidge shot him a sudden, sharp grin. “She was buying me time. She never gave a quiznak about that kind of stuff.”

Keith stared at her, his perception of that day—and Colleen—shifting to fit. She’d had such strong opinions, down to the florist. He’d assumed that was her way of channeling her grief. “Your mom’s known this entire time?”

Pidge’s smile dimmed. “She has no idea that I’m out here. I don’t know what she thinks happened to me; I’m sure the Garrison’s spreading plenty of lies this time around, too.”

“But she knew about Pidge Gunderson.”

“Yeah, of course.” She said it matter-of-factly, like everyone had parents who’d support infiltration of a military facility. “She wasn’t fully on board at first, but it wasn’t like she could pass herself off as a cadet, so it had to be me. We knew something was wrong. We never believed the official story. They were rushing everything—the funeral, calling off the search. And when I got caught looking for more information...you don’t ban someone that fast if you’re not hiding something.”

“Your mom’s pretty cool, huh,” Keith said.

“Yeah,” Pidge replied, pressing her lips together, her eyes brimming with unshed tears. “I miss her. I miss all of them.”

Keith cleared his throat uncomfortably. “You’ll get them back.”

“I’m making progress,” she said, her jaw set in familiar determination.

They were quiet after that, both of them feeling the absence of what she hadn’t said in return.

 _You too_.

_You’ll get him back, Keith._

“I’m sorry, Keith,” Pidge said when the tension got too thick to ignore. “I can’t imagine what it’d be like to lose my dad and Matt twice. I know how much it—”

“It’s not the same.” The words came out in a near-growl, low and furious.

He pushed himself to his feet and out of the room before Pidge could try to commiserate further. They were done here. Shiro wasn’t his—he wasn’t...Keith didn’t...

He shook his head, frustrated, unable to put his thoughts in any coherent order. Pidge, all of them, they tried to act like they understood, but they didn’t. They didn’t know what it was like to lose someone like Shiro.

But Pidge was right about one thing. He’d gone through this before. He’d thought he’d understood grief, that he’d finally learned how to handle it, how to go on living when half his heart had been permanently torn away.

It hurt worse the second time.

***

_You must be here for Shiro._

Keith had turned, pulling his intent gaze away from the launch pad, meeting warm brown eyes in a smiling, age-lined face. A Holt—she had to be, since they were in the special viewing area that he’d been escorted to once Shiro had said goodbye. Keith had registered them from afar—a mother and daughter—but hadn’t expected them to approach him.

 _I’m Colleen_ , the woman had said. She’d set her hand on top of the girl’s head, stilling her momentarily. _And this is Katie._

 _Keith_ , he’d replied, nodding at the girl, who’d said a quick hello before pulling away from her mother, her long brown hair swinging. She’d had a camera clutched tightly in her hands, which she was using to snap photo after photo, in between enthusiastic bounces, her energy barely contained. Most of those would probably turn out blurry, Keith had thought, before wondering if she had any of Shiro in there. Maybe he could ask for copies.

 _A few more years and I’ll be losing her to space flights, too_ , Colleen had sighed, shaking her head in amusement. _I guess the Holts were all born with stardust in their veins. What about you?_

 _What do you mean?_ Keith had asked, puzzled by the continued attempt at conversation. They’d done the polite introductions; why would she be interested beyond that?

She’d gestured at the launch pad, then at the crowd milling in the much larger visitor area. _You must be getting close to graduation. My son jumped at the first offworld mission he could. Which side of the fence are you planning to be on, Keith?_

They’d been interrupted by a thunderous rumble from the launch pad, smoke billowing as the boosters fired. Keith had kept his face tilted to the sky, shielding his eyes from the sun, squinting until there was nothing left to see but the spots left behind in his vision.

 _The first time is difficult_ , Colleen had said, gently. He’d nearly forgotten she was still there.

 _You’re gonna tell me it gets easier_ , he’d said—not intending to be rude, but wishing she’d take the hint and leave him alone. Watching Shiro disappear from view was harder than he’d expected; he needed space to untangle his emotions.

 _Not at all_ , she’d replied, her laugh surprisingly husky for a woman that petite. Although her eyes were bright, almost twinkling with amusement, Keith could see some of his sadness mirrored in her face. _Somehow, I manage to miss him more every time. Especially now, with my son up there, too._

Keith had touched the card in his pocket, using it to ground himself. Takashi Shirogane. Garrison Pilot. Recruitment Officer.

Best Friend.

 _How do you deal with it?_ he’d asked.

Colleen had looked as surprised by the question as he’d felt. _I keep busy_ , she’d said. _My life goes on when Sam’s away._

_You don’t mind that he’s always leaving you?_

_Goodness,_ Colleen had said through another quiet chuckle. _You get right to the point, don’t you?_ She’d given him a long, thoughtful look. _Of course a part of me wishes Sam didn’t take on quite so many missions. But that’s the man I married. Sam’s always supported my dreams; I’d never stand in the way of his. That’s what love looks like, at least for us._

Love. Keith had turned the word around in his mind, testing to feel how it fit.

 _Don’t worry, Keith,_ Colleen had said, wrapping her arm around her daughter, who’d returned, waving her camera and chattering in excitement. _They’ll be back before you know it. Sam and Matt are in the best hands possible up there. And your Shiro will be safe, too._

 _He’s not my—_ Keith had started, but Katie had grabbed her mother’s hand and was dragging her to the exit.

 _Love,_ he’d said aloud, now that there was no one around to hear it.

The sky had been almost searingly blue that afternoon; the wispy contrail had already begun melting away, erasing a path that Keith couldn’t follow.

***

Pidge was working out her aggression on the training deck when Keith retraced his steps. She made it to the third level before registering his presence—or, more likely, before she was willing to acknowledge him.

Keith tossed her a towel that he’d retrieved from a bin in the corner; she nodded in thanks and rubbed it roughly over her head, knocking her glasses askew and leaving her hair sticking up in unruly tufts.

“I swapped the lenses out,” she said, tossing the towel onto the floor, right where someone—probably Lance—would trip over it later. “They’re clear plastic. I don’t know why I still wear them; you all know who I am now.”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me,” Keith said. He bent to pick up the towel, taking the two necessary steps to the side to deposit it in a chute that sent it down to an automated laundry room somewhere in the Castle’s unexplored depths.

Pidge turned her bayard around in her hands, picking at an imaginary speck of dust on its surface, avoiding Keith’s eyes. “Shiro said something a lot like that. Neither one of you would’ve ever shared my secret, would you.”

“Of course not.”

“You say that like it’s a normal way people function.” Pidge gave him a watery smile. “I miss him too, you know.”

Keith did his best to not react. On a purely logical level, he understood that Shiro was important to everyone in the Castle. That was an inevitable factor of getting to know Shiro—he _mattered_. He was the kind of person who had an impact on everyone he encountered, who always left a lasting impression. Keith’s grief wasn’t unique, even though, at the moment, it felt all-encompassing. World-shattering.

 _Patience_ , he reminded himself, counting off his breaths until he could speak calmly. He wasn’t angry with Pidge. He was furious with a universe that had taken Shiro away from him again. But this time, he had resources he would’ve been desperate to harness a year earlier.

“What made you and your mom believe they were still alive?” He’d thought Colleen had given up. She’d gone along with the Garrison’s plans, a deflated widow draped in black, nothing like the confident woman who’d looked him in the eyes after the launch and told him Shiro would return.

He should’ve seen that it was a front—that the entire time, she’d kept digging for the truth.

“The Garrison was lying to us,” Pidge repeated; when Keith made an impatient gesture, she frowned. “I don’t know what you’re wanting me to tell you. We were drawing reasonable conclusions based on hard evidence. I watched the feeds. There was no record of a crash.”

She was steering clear of what they both knew she meant. They’d all been in the same battle. They’d watched Zarkon nearly crush Voltron, sending bolts of quintessence sizzling through the head, where Shiro sat. Through their comms, they’d all heard him screaming.

The explosion from Zarkon’s defeat had blasted them apart, the Black Lion again taking the brunt of the energy surge. Keith had heard the others talking since then—Hunk using words like _disintegrated_ before lapsing into guilty silence upon seeing him stalk into the room.

Keith was surrounded by people who believed, despite the magic powering their Castle- and Lion-shaped ships, that they knew exactly what had happened, that he was simply clinging to delusions, unable to move on. They hadn’t been out there in the desert. Hadn’t felt the strange pull from the Blue Lion—the _need_ to keep searching.

“My mom,” Pidge said. She stopped, then started again, reluctantly. “She told me once, a couple weeks before Shiro’s escape pod crashed, that she could feel my dad out there still. That if he’d died, she’d know it.”

“Because a part of her would’ve died with him.”

Pidge jerked her head up, startled. “How did you—did she tell you that, too?”

“No,” Keith said. “That’s just what it’s like.”

When the falling star had blazed across the night sky, Keith had already _known_ , somewhere deep inside, that his long-awaited answers were on their way. He’d let himself believe once before that Shiro had died. It’d taken a year to put all the pieces back together.

He wouldn’t make that mistake again.


	4. Chapter 4

Keith didn't sleep the night they finally got Shiro back. For _good,_ this time, if he and the Black Lion had anything to say about it.

He should've been exhausted, after everything they'd gone through. A part of him was; he felt the bone-deep weariness, but at a distance, like it was hardly connected to him anymore. If he paid enough attention, he could identify a leaden weight in his limbs, accompanying the sluggish churn of his thoughts as he’d tried to keep up with Pidge’s rapidfire plans for returning to Earth, seeing her parents again, rebuilding the Castle, hugging her dog, maybe even finally getting the chance to catch up on some tv show he'd never heard of.

Heading back to Earth...it was a good plan, he’d conceded, willing himself to stand tall, to channel some of Shiro's calm, steadying confidence. But when everyone had retired to their Lions for the night, comfortably squabbling over who'd sleep where and who had to share space with Kaltenecker—or worse, Coran—he let all the thoughts he'd held at bay come flooding back.

 _Shiro_ , was the first thought, a name as familiar and comforting as the breath in Keith's lungs. He closed his eyes and let it shudder past his lips in a silent exhale, trying to focus on the relief, rather than the panic still echoing through his veins.

 _Shiro's here_ , he reminded himself. _He came back to me._

It helped a little, but the energy still thrumming through him was almost too much to handle, broken interlapping threads weaving through his mind so loudly that he wondered how his mom and Shiro could sleep through the commotion.

_I almost lost him_

_If I hadn’t—_

_He **died**._

_He was alone in there, all this time_

_None of us even—_

_Does he remember..._

_What if I’d—_

_His arm. I did that to him._

_He was trying to—_

_I lost him._

_How did I not know?_

Keith jolted upright, his chest constricting unbearably, air drawn into his lungs in harsh gasps that seemed to echo across the Black Lion’s cargo hold—their makeshift sleeping chamber, not particularly built for comfort. He had to get out of there. He couldn’t spend the entire night holding his breath, listening for Shiro, straining his eyes to pick his shape out of the darkness.

Shiro was here. He was okay. There was nothing Keith could do at the moment, other than let him rest.

He scrubbed his hands over his face, then flinched back, unable to stifle the hiss of pain.

Clenching his jaw, he touched a finger to the top of the burn, then traced the searing line slowly, stolidly, down to his chin. It’d serve as a permanent reminder of how close he’d come to losing everything that mattered to him.

Across the room, Shiro stirred, with a quiet, distressed noise that had Keith out of his bunk and halfway to him before he caught himself.

_He’s okay. Let him sleep._

Still, he waited, until Shiro had settled again, his thin blanket gathered more closely around him. After a brief moment of consideration—Shiro would be irritated if he woke to find Keith hovering over him in concern—he retrieved his own abandoned blanket, draping it carefully over Shiro’s broad shoulders, his narrow waist—the empty space where his right arm had been.

The skin around Keith’s scar pulled tight as he fought back the crushing wave of guilt.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, barely certain he was saying the words aloud. “I should’ve found you sooner.”

***

He dozed, briefly, in the Black Lion’s cockpit, the glow of the screens providing a soothing backdrop that allowed him to gradually relax the tension in his overstrained muscles. He’d been running on empty since...he cast his mind back, the events of the past several days feeling far longer, his sense of time still skewed by his years in the quantum abyss.

Meeting Romelle had made far too many pieces slot into place. Everyone, even Allura, had fallen under Lotor’s spell. They’d trusted him. They’d wanted this alliance too badly, setting aside their suspicions and the knowledge of Lotor’s past actions to embrace a peace that had always seemed a little too good to be true.

Discovering Lotor’s true intentions hadn’t come as a surprise. Not to Keith, anyway, or to his equally mistrustful mother, who’d apparently passed on more than her physical attributes. They’d known something about Lotor wasn’t right. They simply couldn’t have predicted that it’d be this bad.

Shiro had believed Lotor. To some extent, that was to be expected: Shiro always saw the good in people. There’d been something odd about it, though—a difference in Shiro’s reactions, a harshness behind his words, that Keith had convinced himself he was misreading.

 _All I’m saying is that it doesn’t hurt to be careful. You of all people know that, Shiro_ , he’d pleaded, shortly after the Kral Zera, when it had become clear that Shiro was throwing Voltron’s weight fully behind Lotor’s leadership.

Through the video feed, the nuances of Shiro’s expressions had been harder to interpret. Maybe Keith had imagined the slight nod, the way his mouth had opened, as though he'd been about to say something. Instead, he'd suddenly grimaced, clutching at the side of his head. It was a quick movement that he’d immediately attempted to disguise, but Keith had been too concerned to let him succeed.

_Are you still having headaches?_

Shiro was good at a lot of things. One of his most underrated skills was one Keith had frequently seen in action: an ability to deftly deflect questions he didn’t want to answer, particularly if they had to do with his personal life—or anything that might lead to someone making an unwanted fuss over him. Shiro concealed a fair amount, even from his friends. But he didn’t lie. Certainly not to Keith.

If, in that moment, Shiro had lied, things might’ve turned out differently. Keith would’ve _known_ that something was wrong. He would’ve dropped everything to rush back to the Castle, to figure out what was going on with Shiro and how he could help.

Keith had seen the _No_ shaping on Shiro’s lips, before Shiro had visibly halted it.

 _They come and go,_ he’d said instead, pulling the words out with a furrowed brow. The rest had flowed more smoothly after that, sounding more like Shiro, and Keith had set aside the doubt nudging at the back of his mind. _We’re dealing with a lot right now. Lotor’s meeting with other Galra leaders to consolidate power; there’s a lot of murmuring about insurrection. He doesn’t want to use force to bring them into line, unless he has to, but some of the Galra see that as a weakness._

 _You can’t change the Empire in a day_ , Keith had said, and the tension in Shiro’s face had eased slightly.

 _No,_ he’d said. _We’re making progress, though, Keith. I know you’re skeptical. The Blade of Marmora has spent generations distrusting anyone in power._

_For good reason._

Shiro had inclined his head in agreement. _You’re asking me to undercut Lotor’s authority at a time that he needs it the most. I can’t do that. Voltron has to stand by him; if we don’t, how will the Coalition ever trust him?_

But did Lotor deserve that trust? Keith hadn’t voiced the thought; they’d already spent far too long talking in circles, when all he’d wanted was to see Shiro’s face, to reassure himself that he was doing well.

 _Kolivan’s sending me on a mission_ , he’d said—the other reason for the call. _I might be off the grid for a little while._

 _Be safe_ , Shiro had said, pressing the tips of his fingers to the screen.

On his side, Keith had matched the gesture. _I’ll see you when I get back._

He opened his eyes, checking the displays for any alerts. Still quiet. As far as the sensors could tell, they were alone out here. And if he was reading the time correctly, he’d had at least a couple of hours of fitful sleep.

“Better than nothing, huh?” he asked Black, who, of course, didn’t respond.

Keith had never thought of the Lions as machines; from the beginning, it’d been clear that there was more to them. Pidge, who instantly bonded with anything with a hint of artificial intelligence, had thrown around ideas about consciousness that Keith hadn’t paid a lot of attention to. He and Red understood each other. He’d figured that was all that really mattered.

“Thank you,” he said. It was worth speaking the words out loud; although his Lion couldn’t communicate back in the same way, it felt right to shape his gratitude into something more substantial than the cacophony of fragmented anxiety still swirling through their mental link.

“You kept him safe for me. I’ll never forget that.”

If Shiro hadn’t been in the Black Lion—if their bond hadn’t been so strong that the Lion had refused to let him simply dissolve into nothing...

“Thank you,” he said again, his voice choked with the terror that swept through him every time he let himself imagine the alternate scenarios. “I don’t know if you were trying to tell me earlier. I’m sorry I wasn’t listening.”

 _It should be you out there,_ he’d said, when he’d finally thought to search for Shiro in the Black Lion’s hangar.

Shiro had twisted in place, looking startled and a little embarrassed, before swiftly rising to his feet. He’d been sitting several arms’ lengths from the Lion—not attempting to communicate or go inside, as far as Keith could tell.

 _Keith. I was just..._ He’d sighed, turning back to face the Lion. _It’s easier to think in here, sometimes. We’re not linked anymore, but my mind seems...clearer._

Keith should’ve asked what he’d meant. He’d been too focused on giving Shiro what he’d thought he’d wanted. The Black Lion had always been his. Keith was only stepping in until Shiro was ready to lead again.

_Try again. I’m not sure what happened the last time, but—_

Shiro had already begun shaking his head. _You don’t need me, Keith._

Keith had barely listened to the rest—more of Shiro’s vehement faith in him—his heart snagging on that first, utterly false, statement. He’d never heard anything less true.

But Shiro believed it. He’d come back to find that they’d patched over his position in their team. They’d formed Voltron without him. Keith had, without intending to, somehow severed the bond that had given Shiro something concrete and meaningful to hang onto in the aftermath of his captivity and all its accompanying trauma.

He’d never said it in so many words, but, when it came to Shiro, Keith had become adept at reading between the lines.

After that, the decision hadn’t been hard to make. Splitting his time between the Blade of Marmora and Voltron was already becoming unmanageable; he would’ve had to choose eventually.

When one of the options led to Shiro’s happiness, what else could Keith do?

“You knew, didn’t you,” he said, watching the symbols shift over the screens, registering that all was well. “That’s why you rejected him at first. You already had Shiro. You knew that he was...someone else.”

But that wasn’t exactly true, either.

Before Haggar had flipped whatever switch she’d implanted in him, taking control of the clone body, he’d been Shiro in every way that mattered. He had Shiro’s memories, his innate goodness, his stubborn insistence on helping others, even if he hurt himself in the process.

He’d been hurting, every single day of his manufactured life. And Keith, filled with too much relief to see clearly, had missed all the signs.

A soft _pop_ gave Keith just enough warning to shield his eyes from a sudden flare of light, which quickly resolved into a shaggy, drooling shape that shoved its nose into his face.

“Hey, boy,” Keith said, digging his fingers into the thick fur of his cosmic wolf’s shoulders—both out of affection and practicality, to keep the wolf from climbing into the chair with him. He hadn’t quite gotten it through his giant head yet that he’d grown far past the lap-sitting stage. “Where’ve you been?”

“Leaping on me before realizing you weren’t there,” Krolia said. She patted the wolf on her way to check the readouts. It didn’t take long; they were still on course, the Lions drifting at an energy-saving pace that passed as their version of slumber.

“Is Shiro—”

“He’s still asleep. He’s doing fine, Keith.”

Keith dropped back into his seat. The wolf nudged at him again, swiping a concerned tongue over his cheeks. “Alright, buddy,” he said, rubbing behind the wolf’s ears, then scratching down to the spots that always seemed to be particularly itchy. The wolf thumped a hind leg, huffed in satisfaction, and plopped into a seated position, resting his chin on Keith’s knee.

His mom began tapping at the monitors, frowning in concentration. Some of Keith’s worries lifted away; although there was no sunlight to drive the nightmares back, his family served the same purpose. His mom, his wolf, his best friend—healing, slowly but surely, with time finally on his side.

Keith felt more whole than he’d been in years. Outside the Lion, there were plenty of uncertainties to explore, battles to fight, mysteries to untangle. But in here, he had everything he’d ever needed.

***

The reappearance of Lotor’s generals—ex-generals, apparently _warlords_ now—caught all of them by surprise. Acxa was an unknown quantity that Keith couldn’t puzzle out. He hadn’t really spared any of them much thought during the showdown with Lotor: once they’d disengaged from the fight, they’d ceased to be of interest to him.

Yet here they were, former teammates suddenly at odds, with Zethrid and Ezor slinging insults at Acxa in a feeble attempt to throw her off balance. Keith was obviously missing large chunks of the story but didn’t have the time or inclination to begin piecing them together. The important part was that Acxa was, for whatever reason, on their side. That meant it was Keith’s responsibility, as the current leader of Voltron, to ensure her safety in turn.

As the Black Lion swooped toward them, jaws opening wide, Keith took a rapid inventory of their surroundings. He’d told Lance to take charge—all the Lions were moving, which meant the paladins had successfully returned to them, but the Black Lion’s cockpit was empty.

“Shiro?” he called, his pulse tripping over itself.

Pidge’s voice carried through the comms. “I’ve got him.”

“And your mom’s with Hunk,” Lance added. “She’s kinda terrifying, by the way. Did you all see how she tore that—”

“Okay, let’s get out of here,” Keith cut in. He wanted to put some distance between them and the ship they’d just blown a giant hole in. By now, experience had taught him that there was always a chance of survivors with still-functioning weapons, and a high probability of other ships arriving to check on the disturbance. They could chit-chat when they were on solid ground again.

***

“Three deca-phoebs.” Hunk finally unfroze, moving from the cave entrance to set the fresh pile of sticks by the fire. He stooped to retrieve the ones he’d dropped and began slowly feeding them into the crackling flames. “That’s a lotta time for word to spread. I wonder what they’ve been doing without us. All our allies. The Olkari. The...Balmerans.”

 _Shay_ , Keith thought, the sobering news tempered a bit by a spike of amusement at Hunk’s complete lack of subtlety. He automatically looked to Shiro, ready to trade grins over what everyone but Hunk had long-ago acknowledged as a romantic relationship. Hunk had certainly turned down enough offers in the meantime, mentioning a “rock lady” if the admirers became particularly hard to shake. He’d also turned beet red and burnt all their dinners when Lance had referred to the two of them as “adorable” and started up a line of—seemingly genuine, for Lance—questioning about rock babies.

Shiro had shut down the teasing after that, citing the importance of respecting boundaries. Keith suspected it had a lot more to do with his reluctance to return to Coran’s cooking.

The expected exchange didn’t happen; Shiro barely seemed to be paying attention to Hunk, or to Romelle’s response—which sounded like it could lead to some pretty lengthy stories, depending on who decided to fill her in on the tales of their exploits. Shiro, standing at the far end of the cave, the fire separating them, was staring at Acxa, his mouth set in a firm, unhappy line.

Keith glanced at her; she was deep in quiet conversation with Allura. Did Shiro distrust her story? There didn’t seem to be any reasons to doubt her. What would she gain from joining them at this stage? Lotor was gone. Voltron had been vulnerable, all the paladins already captured and under her friends’ control before she’d betrayed them. There’d been real bitterness there, and valid explanations for her actions.

After some effort, he managed to catch Shiro’s eye, then tilt his head in Acxa’s direction, lifting his eyebrows in question. Shiro’s lips parted, his eyes going wide and sorrowful, before he shook his head in one quick, dismissive jerk.

“I’m going to check on the Lions,” he announced—ostensibly to the group as a whole, but without waiting for a response before he pushed the makeshift curtain aside, leaving the cave.

Keith didn’t move for a minute. That had been...strange. _Not like Shiro_ , he thought, then immediately hated himself for that momentary flicker of fear. The memory was still sharp—the smell of his own flesh burning as a man with Shiro’s eyes spoke with a voice that Keith knew better than his own.

They’d all checked him over after he’d woken. Shiro had insisted on it, asking Pidge to run as many tests as possible on the remaining stub of his arm, to be absolutely certain that there was none of Haggar’s influence left.

He was Shiro. But something was wrong, and the barrier he was setting up this time seemed like it’d been hastily constructed to keep Keith out.

Pidge shifted along the crates they’d set around the fire, her armor scraping as she shuffled closer. “Our comms were on,” she said in a low voice once she’d reached Keith’s side.

He gave her an exasperated look when she stared at him expectantly, not elaborating. She sighed, then leaned in after peering—none too furtively—at Acxa and Allura.

“When you were fighting Zethrid and Ezor, the mic in your helmet picked up what they were saying. You were linked with the rest of us; we were making sure we could track you in case anything went wrong.”

“Okay?” he said, drawing the word out. Apparently that was supposed to mean something. “I was pretty busy at the time. Did I miss anything important?”

Pidge adjusted her glasses, then patted his knee. “You know what, I’m gonna let you figure this one out on your own. Boundaries.” She went to help Hunk with the fire, which was roaring pleasantly now. Coran had also joined them and appeared to be telling Romelle a story about the Balmerans where he’d played a central, heroic role.

“No, no, I’m pretty sure that’s when you picked up one of the sentries’ arms and threw it at them,” Hunk was saying when Keith gave it up as a lost cause and went to find his mom.

She was cleaning her weapons at the back of the cave, with the wolf lying next to her, his head on his paws; she paused to gather Keith into a quick side hug. He sank into it, holding on for longer than usual. His mom pulled away a little to brush the hair out of his face, her clawed, calloused fingers gentle.

“What’s going on?”

“Not sure,” he said. “I don’t think I wanna talk about it.”

“Okay,” she said. “Help me with these, then? Yours could probably do with a good polish, as well.”

The bayards were magically self-cleaning, along with all their other properties, but it served as a good enough distraction.

By the time Shiro returned, Keith had switched to playing with the wolf, tugging at the knotted end of a rope that he’d found in one of the crates. The wolf was growling happily, his fur glimmering briefly every few minutes, before he remembered that teleporting was strictly not permitted during tug-o-war—or any games where Keith wasn’t expecting to be abruptly transported to other locations, where the cheating wolf could gain the upper paw.

Shiro stopped beside Keith; his boots were dusted with a fine, red-tinged coating of dirt that didn’t look like it’d come from the rocky area where they’d set down their Lions. He’d been walking for a while, then.

“Who’s winning?” he asked, crouching down, his voice light and interested.

“He always wins,” Keith said, giving the rope a particularly sharp yank to demonstrate.

The wolf’s hackles raised, the muscles in his shoulders bunching as he braced his big front paws, his growling going guttural and fierce. Keith waited until the tension in the rope reached the right point, then let go as the wolf’s teeth snapped through it.

“Learned my lesson the first few times,” he explained, sitting back comfortably, watching as the wolf spat out the rope fragments, then waved his tail, thoroughly pleased with himself. “If I hang on too long, I pretty much go flying when he decides we’re done.”

“I’m glad you found each other out there,” Shiro said. “All three of you.”

Keith lifted his head; his mom was smiling softly at Shiro.

“And I’m glad he’s had you,” she said.

Keith’s face heated. So this was what it was like to be embarrassed by a parent in front of someone you—he cleared his throat, refusing to let the conversation drift into exactly _why_ his mom knew so much about Shiro and the impact he’d had on Keith’s life. The initial memory flashes hadn’t been voluntary, but in the following years, they’d talked about a lot of things. Keith had been able to come to terms with his own emotions. That didn’t mean he was ready to share them with Shiro—with his mom sitting a few feet away.

Fortunately, Shiro was already redirecting, his attention drawn back to Keith. “I still can’t really wrap my mind around the fact that you were gone that long. If you hadn’t gotten so...tall, I’d hardly believe it. I’ve always thought of time as a straight line.”

“Pidge would have a lot to say about that,” Keith said. “And Acxa, I guess. I’m on the other side of it with you now; it _is_ strange when someone you’ve seen just a few weeks earlier suddenly looks different.”

Shiro’s expression closed off again at her name. It couldn’t be because she was half-Galra. Shiro had always been the first to advocate for new allies, no matter their background. Even with Lotor...but maybe that was it. Lotor had been a mistake that, for Shiro, might be linked with the unforgivable things that Haggar— _Honerva_ , apparently, Lotor’s mother—had done to him.

“We should figure out sleeping arrangements,” Shiro said, in a clipped tone that was rapidly approaching the military precision he rarely used with Keith. “Hunk was right about the Lions; we’ll have to let them rest. We’ll need to spend at least one night here.”

“I don’t think you’ll hear many objections to that,” Krolia said.

She nodded toward the campfire, where the others had gathered to watch as Coran put on what appeared to be a shadow puppet rendition of Voltron’s greatest hits. Romelle was laughing and clapping in delight, particularly when Lance joined in, adding a particularly wonky Lion to battle Coran’s Robeast. She was leaning toward him, her face bright and interested; it was exactly the type of scenario that Lance, with his constant bragging about collecting fangirls, should’ve been preening over.

Instead, when the Lion tackled the Robeast, the shadow of Coran’s fingers making it wriggle in exaggerated dismay, Lance turned to look at Allura. When she smiled, dipping her head a bit and tucking her long white hair behind her ear, Lance beamed.

“Huh,” Keith said. “That’s new.”

“Sometimes it takes a while to see the person right in front of you,” Krolia said. “It can help, I suppose, when someone else enters the picture and makes you realize what you might lose.”

It was more interest than Keith had expected her to show in the subject; she hadn’t been present for Lance’s initial, obnoxious flirtation and Allura’s consistent rejections, followed by the slow development of a friendship that had apparently, while Keith hadn’t been paying attention, begun to transition into something else.

He started to respond, but the words stopped short when he saw a dark flush spreading under Shiro’s scar, spilling onto his cheeks. He’d never seen Shiro flustered before. _Surprised_ , sometimes, caught off guard, like he’d been when they’d returned to the Castle after clearly going through some sort of inexplicable time warp. Anyone would’ve been a little thrown by that. This, though...this was new, too.

“I—I should,” Shiro stuttered. “I’ve—blankets.” And with that, he was leaving the cave again.

“I’m pretty sure the blankets are packed in one of these crates,” Keith said, but his mom was smiling, shaking her head.

“Oh, Keith,” she said. “Humans are fascinating, aren’t they.”

***

“We’re just dropping her off,” Keith said, doing his best to not sound as frustrated as he felt. “The Black Lion is huge. There’s more than enough room for you, Shiro.”

“Pidge could use the company,” Shiro said. He was avoiding Keith’s eyes. He’d exchanged a few words with Acxa that morning, looking supremely awkward about it, which was unlike him, too. Still—he’d made the effort, pushing past whatever was bothering him to attempt to make Acxa feel more welcome.

That was the Shiro he knew.

 _Patience_ , he thought, taking a moment to set his emotions back in line. He was being unreasonable. Shiro wasn’t leaving; all he was doing was switching Lions for a little while.

Shiro scrunched his eyebrows down, then visibly smoothed his expression back into something blandly pleasant. “It’s better this way,” he added. “You could use the time to talk. Get to know each other more.”

“Okay...” Keith said, utterly puzzled now.

They were taking Acxa to a nearby moon where she’d said she’d stored an extra ship and a good amount of supplies. From there, she’d find a way to join with the closest Coalition forces. She was poised to become an excellent ally; her extensive experience with the highest levels of Galra command would be an extremely valuable resource, especially with Voltron still out of action. Ordinarily, Shiro would’ve been focused on building that connection, ensuring that their plans were aligned and that the alliance was fully cemented. Allura had been spending a fair amount of time talking with Acxa, but Shiro had—

 _Oh_ , Keith thought. _He’s trying to get me to lead._ It was obvious, once he took a few steps back to consider their overall situation, rather than getting bogged down in the tangle of worries he’d wrapped around Shiro.

“You’re right,” he said. “But Shiro—you know I’ll always value your advice.”

For some reason, that seemed to make things worse. Shiro lifted his eyes to Keith’s—they were the same extraordinary silvery grey they’d always been, but wide, almost panicked now. He stuttered over Keith’s name, with an utterly confusing protest about his ability to advise in these types of matters. “I’ve honestly never been good at it. You should’ve seen me back when...anyway, Hunk might be a better person to ask,” he finished.

Hunk _had_ been increasingly interested in the diplomatic side of Voltron’s work; Keith had heard the stories about his lessons with Lotor’s nanny, and it was undeniable that Hunk, perhaps more than any of them, had an innate ability to connect with other species. Up until they’d lost communications, he’d apparently been receiving regular transmissions from some restaurant manager at the Space Mall, begging him to return—or at least share more recipes. Then there were the weekly video calls with Shay, although those were building upon a rather different sort of connection.

Maybe Shiro needed a break. As Krolia kept reminding them both, he was still recovering. Shiro had always been a pillar of strength; he’d more than earned some time without the fate of the universe weighing on his shoulders.

“You’re right about Pidge,” Keith added, reaching for Shiro’s shoulder, then hesitating and switching to the other arm, the one not still encased in Galra metal, sliced to a stump by Keith’s sword. “It’s a good idea for her to have a passenger to keep her on track.”

Coran and Romelle hadn’t helped matters; with the three of them arguing over video games, Green had started to veer off course, nearly getting separated from the group before Lance had noticed and insisted on another Lion changeup.

As if summoned, Coran popped up next to them, carrying one of the crates. “This is the last of them,” he said. “We’re ready when you are, Keith.”

Keith tightened his fingers around Shiro’s shoulder, then, reluctantly, let go without turning it into a hug. It’d be too much to say, _I’ll miss you_. It was hard, now, to have Shiro out of his sight for too long; he’d drawn his pile of blankets close to Shiro’s the night before, watching the firelight’s shadows flicker over his cheekbones, doing his best to not imagine how empty the cave would’ve been if anything had gone just a little bit differently over the past few weeks.

“Give him time,” Keith’s mom said, stepping up beside him as he watched Shiro joining Pidge, Green’s mouth opening, then closing around them. “He’s a good man. He’s been through a lot.”

“I know,” Keith said. But the truth was, none of them did, really. It was no wonder that Shiro needed some space to himself. The least Keith could do was give him that.

***

The journey to Earth passed slowly, days dragging on with a monotony that made it difficult to separate one from the other. Without his mom for company, Keith began to slide too much into his head, losing long stretches of time to dark thoughts that became increasingly hard to shake.

What were they doing out here? Had this even been the right decision? By the time they made it to Earth, then rebuilt the Castle, how many more Coalition planets would’ve fallen to the Galra again? They’d already lost an immense number of allies—and friends. How many of them would’ve still been alive if Voltron hadn’t come along to give them false hope?

“Pidge,” he said, flipping on his comms. “Our supplies are running low; keep an eye out for somewhere to touch down for a while.”

“Scanning the area,” Pidge said. She muttered for a few minutes, then made a triumphant noise. “There’s a promising one about a varga away. Looks like it’s got water, some vegetation.”

“Great. Coran and Hunk—”

“Food duty, got it,” Hunk said.

The roles didn’t need to be assigned at this point, but Keith went down the line anyway, keeping them on track with some semblance of a routine. Hunk, with Coran along as a guide, would gather anything edible. Romelle and Allura, the two strongest, would refill the water tanks—a crucial backup supply if the Lions’ filtration system went on the fritz. Lance would take Kaltenecker out to stretch her legs and graze. Pidge would run scans on all the Lions and analyze any possibilities for recharging their energy while they rested; the wolf would probably keep her company, snoozing underfoot and teleporting between the other groups if he got bored.

“Shiro, you and I will scout out the territory, see what else we can find,” Keith said, ignoring Lance’s grumbling. They switched it up sometimes, but this was the part that did the most to set Keith back on track.

They didn’t talk much for the first part of the hike; it was enough to simply be outside with Shiro, breathing fresh air, feeling daylight soak into his skin. As soon as Pidge had given the go-ahead, he and Shiro had removed their helmets, Keith shaking out his hair and tilting his face up to drink in the warmth. The rest of the paladin armor felt heavy, constricting; when they crested a hill and found a lake sparkling in invitation in the valley below, he grinned at Shiro.

“You thinking what I am?”

“We shouldn’t,” Shiro said, with longing in his voice. The Lions had showers—of a sort—that weren’t intended to be used on a longterm basis. Although they were technically clean, Keith always felt as though he was still covered in a thin layer of grime.

“Pidge said the water was safe. No acid lakes this time. C’mon, Shiro.”

He started down the hill at a slow jog, testing out his footing at first. The incline was an easy slope, covered in thick, spongy vegetation that cushioned his steps. When he heard Shiro pick up pace behind him, he threw back a challenging grin and turned it into a race.

They stopped at the edge of the lake, both panting, Shiro chuckling a bit.

“We might need to build more physical exercise into our routines,” he said.

Keith scoffed. “I think we can chalk this one up to atmosphere differences.”

Just the past week, he’d had to listen to a twenty minute “formal complaint” from Pidge about Shiro’s insistence that she start the mornings with a series of exercises that she claimed were worse than anything the Garrison had put her through. When the rant had finally sputtered out, she’d sighed and told him to forget it.

_So you’re saying you don’t want me to make him switch Lions?_

_No!_ she’d exclaimed. _He’s impossible to argue with, and I’ve never seen anyone worse at video games, but...it’s Shiro. He let me talk to him about Matt and my parents for three hours yesterday. Made me actually feel like my family might be okay out there._

Keith should tell the others about the lake; they’d want to rinse off, too. Maybe he and Shiro should try it out first, though. That was their part of the mission, after all: exploration, making certain there were no hidden dangers, like creatures lurking underneath the water.

“Pidge checked for life forms, didn’t she?” Shiro asked. He was peering intently at the water’s smooth surface, rippled slightly by a gentle breeze.

His mind was probably following the same paths, but for different reasons, Keith thought guiltily. When Shiro had first come back—the Shiro who was and wasn’t him—he and Keith had spent hours talking through his escape. The empty operating room, the Galra ship, the hazards on the planet below.

 _They didn’t come after me_ , Shiro had said, his long hair falling around his face, his throat scratchy from exhaustion and the after-effects of dehydration. He’d taken a long, hot shower but had refused to spend any time in a healing pod. He hadn’t wanted to see anyone but Keith. Hadn’t wanted to answer questions that he was still struggling through on his own.

 _You should get some sleep,_ Keith had said. He’d been sitting on the edge of the bed, aching to touch Shiro—his arm, the jut of his knee under the bedspread, anything that would assure him that Shiro was actually here, that he wasn’t some horrible, impossibly beautiful figment of his imagination.

 _They had to have known I’d escaped_ , Shiro had said, his fingers twisting in the covers. _Why didn’t they follow me?_

“I didn’t catch much of what Coran said,” Keith admitted. A lot of Altean words that didn’t mean anything to him. “Only that we shouldn’t come across anything hazardous. Nothing bigger than a...” He scrunched his forehead, trying to recall.

“A blurfphoffl,” Shiro said. “Best I can remember, anyway. No idea what that is or how large it’s supposed to be.”

“Not big enough to kill us. So we might as well get some swimming in.” Keith began stripping out of his armor, stacking each piece in the shade of a nearby shrub—a squat, turquoise trunk with vibrant orange leaves. When he got down to his undersuit, he stopped to check on Shiro’s progress; it’d be awkward to remove that, too, if Shiro was wading in more fully clothed.

Shiro had removed his boots and the parts of his armor that were easier to access; he was fumbling at his chestplate, frustration shadowing his face. “Takes me longer than it used to,” he said when he saw Keith watching.

“Do you want me to...” Keith trailed off, not sure how Shiro would feel about an offer of help. He’d never appreciated any implications that he couldn’t do something on his own.

Shiro bit his lip and huffed in annoyance—presumably at the armor, not Keith, since he responded with, “If you could, yeah. Just unhook that last part and unzip the top; I can get it, but it’d probably take another ten minutes.”

The chestplate was easy; Keith slid it off, careful to keep from touching Shiro more than necessary. He set it down and stepped up behind Shiro, ducking his head to find the top of the zipper. With his, he always operated by feel; it was nearly invisible to the eye, at a different spot from this angle. He tried to keep his breath steady, but it stirred the short hairs at the back of Shiro’s neck—that neat, carefully shaved line that Shiro still managed to meticulously maintain.

Shiro shivered when Keith finally found the zipper, sliding his thumb under to tug it down.

“Cold?” Keith asked, casting a quick glance up at the sky. He didn’t know how long the days lasted here, but it should be hours yet.

“No, I,” Shiro said, his voice a little rough. “Keith...thanks. I think I’ve got it from here.”

Keith shouldn’t have watched as Shiro pulled the zipper the rest of the way down, then stepped out of the undersuit, his thick muscles flexing under a heavy crisscross of scars. He couldn’t stop a pained hiss from escaping. Shiro turned, his eyebrows lifted in question, and Keith’s eyes dropped, involuntarily, to the wide, jagged line cutting down one pec and looping around his ribcage.

“Attention to detail,” Shiro said, his mouth twisting wryly. “This was from my third arena win, I think. Or the fourth. The details start to muddle together after a while, but I guess Haggar knew I would’ve noticed if it’d suddenly disappeared.” His expression rapidly shifted to concern. “Keith, hey. It’s okay. It was a long time ago, I’m fine now.”

“It’s not that,” Keith choked. He could feel his eyes filling and swallowed, hard, to try to bring himself back under control. It wasn’t the scars, although he’d never seen Shiro this bare before—clad only in a pair of black, skintight shorts that dipped low on his hips and barely covered the tops of his thighs.

The lines cutting across Shiro’s skin were harsh reminders of a period of his life that he probably would’ve rather left buried in the deep, forgotten recesses of his mind. Seeing them made Keith feel like there was a knife twisting in his heart, one he’d like to tear free and thrust straight through Haggar’s throat.

She wasn’t here right now. Shiro was standing in front of him, confusion beginning to slip into something Keith couldn’t bear to see—a hint of insecurity, as though Shiro had anything to be ashamed of—anything that he’d need to cover from view.

He reached out, his thumb barely grazing over the chiseled arc of Shiro’s cheekbone. His heart thumping, he dared a little more, watching intently as the skin along Shiro’s cheek and down to the corner of his mouth—warm, softer than he’d expected—bloomed red under the path of his fingers. Shiro shivered again, his eyes fluttering shut.

 _Is that really a good idea?_ Keith had made room in the meager patch of shade he’d found, close against the cliff, under an overhang that just managed to block some of the blistering noonday sun. He’d expected Shiro to join him, instead of lying flat on his back on the desert floor for the last half hour, his arms flung wide.

 _Mmmm,_ Shiro had said, grinning up at the blindingly blue sky. He was wearing sunglasses, at least, but his face and arms were unshielded, his leather jacket tossed over the seat of his hoverbike. _Sunlight has a lot of health benefits, Keith. Should I list them? First, the serotonin—_

 _Is that why you’re always in such a good mood?_ Keith had grouched. _You’re gonna burn, you know._

Shiro had sighed and flipped onto his side, propping his chin on his hand and tipping his sunglasses down so he could see Keith better. _How have you lived in the desert your whole life while hating the sun?_

 _That’s exactly why; I obviously know better than you what kind of damage it can do_ , Keith had replied, amused despite himself. It was hard to keep a sour mood for long around Shiro. _And I don’t hate it; I respect it. Don’t blame me if you’re peeling tomorrow. Don’t you have an anniversary coming up?_

Shiro had grunted and flopped back into the dirt. _Adam will still love me._

 _That’s not the point,_ Keith had said, ignoring the familiar flare of jealousy that he was gradually getting better at tamping down. _It’ll damage your skin over time, too._

Shiro had flung his arm over his face. When he’d finally spoken again—after Keith had started to wonder if he’d fallen asleep, or passed out from the heat—his voice had carried a more somber quality. _You sound like my grandmother._

That was a sentence Keith had never expected to hear. _I have no idea how to take that,_ he’d said, flatly. _She must’ve been smart, though._

Shiro had chuckled. _She used to run after my grandfather if he left the house without a hat. And she had all these creams that she’d use every night and every morning. Skincare. Anti-wrinkles. She always warned me about taking after my grandfather. If I kept smiling all the time, I’d be covered in wrinkles when I got older._ He’d lifted his other arm, looping his fingers around his right wrist, linking them over his eyes. _I don’t worry too much about that anymore._

“Your smile lines,” Keith murmured, his throat still thick with dismay. He let his hand drop back to his side. “They’re all gone.”

Shiro opened his eyes.

What else had Keith missed? He _knew_ Shiro’s face. He’d mapped it so often he could’ve drawn it from memory. He _had_ , a few times after the supposed crash, tearing the pages out of his notebook when nothing he did could capture the light in Shiro’s eyes—the passion for life that drew everyone to him.

“It’s strange,” Shiro said. “Being in a body that’s mine but...isn’t.” He shrugged with studied nonchalance and moved a few steps away, testing the water with one foot, then wading in until he could duck himself fully under the surface.

It was the tiniest detail for Haggar to have overlooked. In her grand scheme, it hadn’t mattered. Erasing the marks of twenty years of enjoying life to its fullest, subtle records of the laughter that used to pour out of him—who would notice?

Shiro had, at some point; this obviously wasn’t news to him. Keith...maybe he’d never actually wanted to. Once he’d gotten Shiro back, nothing else had mattered anymore. Questions of where he’d been, how he’d returned—some distant sliver of Keith’s mind had feared that investigating too deeply would yield answers he didn’t want to acknowledge.

He shouldn’t have looked away. He shouldn’t have left. So many decisions he couldn’t go back and change.

“Ten thousand years of obsessing over quintessence,” Keith muttered, peeling off his undersuit and following Shiro into the lake, trying to keep anger—at Haggar, with himself—from quivering through the words. It’d broken Haggar down into a completely unrecognizable version of herself, twisted so far from her original form that she’d lost track of who she was. “I guess it doesn’t leave you with a lot of time to think about what happens when you smile.”

“You’re the only person—” Shiro grimaced, sweeping his wet bangs out of his face. “Pidge knew me before, but barely. Sometimes I still...Keith, I’ve got two sets of memories in my head.”

“From when you were...”

“Dead,” Shiro filled in.

He sounded resigned; he’d been dealing with this on his own, like he always did. Waiting for someone else to finally catch up.

Keith splashed a little, clumsily treading water and wishing Shiro hadn’t swum quite so far out. The Garrison had a pool; Keith was familiar with the basic strokes, but far more comfortable when his feet were on solid ground. Shiro made it look effortless, like so much else. He was bobbing slightly in the water, his legs kicking underneath, his arm and shoulders relaxed.

“So all that time in the astral plane—you remember it,” Keith said, slowing his churning movements to better align with Shiro’s. It worked; he stayed afloat, expending less energy.

Shiro shook his head, a light spray misting through the air. “There are a lot of gaps after the fight with Zarkon. I don’t think I was always fully there. I remember pieces, when I could see through the Lion’s eyes. Some of the battles—where I couldn’t do anything to help. The day you all tried to pilot her. The times that he...that _I_ sat in the chair and didn’t understand why the Lion wasn’t responding.” His mouth softened. “All the weeks you spent looking for me.”

“In the wrong places.”

“What matters is that you tried. And I remember when you found me. Both times.”

Silence stretched between them; Shiro moved a little closer, careful to keep their legs from knocking together. “Keith, I,” he said, whatever he’d intended to follow with interrupted by a familiar _pop_ and flash.

“You deserved that,” Keith told the bedraggled, miserably wet wolf as they trailed out of the lake together. He spat out water and scrubbed his fingers through his hair, wishing they’d had soap, but already feeling far cleaner than he had in weeks. “You’re lucky I’m not turning this into a bath, buddy.”

The wolf responded with a long, full-body shake that sprayed a good percentage of the lake water over the armor that they’d clearly left too close to shore.

“Pidge probably sent him,” Shiro said. “We’re still supposed to be reconnoitering. She must be wondering why we’re not answering any comms.” He picked up his helmet, gingerly, then set it back down. “You think he’d be able to bring back some towels?”

The wolf gave one more shake, wagged his tail, and disappeared.

“We’ll find out in a minute,” Keith said, hoping he didn’t return with any of the other paladins instead.

Neither of them had thought through their impromptu swim, but Keith couldn’t really summon any regret. He’d needed this. And although Shiro was attempting to squeeze the damp spots out of his undersuit, an endeavor rendered particularly futile by the fact that he was simultaneously dripping fresh batches of lake water onto it, he looked...happy. More relaxed than Keith had seen him in a while.

Fortunately, the wolf teleported back alone, with a towel that he dropped on the shore next to Shiro before leaping on Keith, knocking him sprawling.

“Good job, boy,” Keith said, petting the wolf while attempting to shove him off so he could stand. “You couldn’t have brought us two, huh?”

“We can share,” Shiro said, tossing the damp towel over once Keith was free. With his typical efficiency, he was already mostly dressed; half his armor was still stacked in a pile, but he was carefully adjusting his helmet. “Pidge? Are you there?”

Keith got dressed more slowly, listening to Shiro’s side of the conversation, then moving to help him with the last of his armor.

Shiro absently thanked him. After a few more exchanges, he removed his helmet again. “They were taking a vote on whether to camp here for a night—letting the Lions rest instead of pushing on right away. She wanted to know if we’d found anything and what you thought. I said I figured you’d be on board but we’d call in again if not.”

“Sounds good to me; we could all use a break,” Keith said. He plucked at the shoulder of his armor. “Now I’m wishing we hadn’t put all this back on.”

Shiro laughed. “We’ll dry off quickly enough if we start walking again. These suits are built for a lot of things, including being pretty waterproof.”

Keith was thinking more about his wet underwear, which was clinging uncomfortably to his thighs. The suits most likely had a setting for that, too, something that would siphon away extraneous moisture, like it did for their sweat during strenuous battles, but he still would’ve preferred to have stayed in the lake for longer—with Shiro, forgetting for just a little while that the rest of the universe was relying on them.

“Alright,” he said. “Looks like we’ll be walking _around_ the lake. There was one more valley past this one that we should check before heading back.”

By the time they reached the next valley, the sky had begun to deepen in color—approaching twilight, which meant they shouldn’t be out for too much longer. Neither of them were in much of a hurry, though. Shiro knelt to examine a pretty patch of star-shaped blossoms. When he touched one, its color shifted from pale pink to a rich shade of indigo, a change that rippled across the meadow as Shiro sat back on his heels.

“Beautiful,” he breathed.

“Yeah,” Keith said. Shiro’s smile was dazzling in the dimming light. His hair—pure white now, with a silvery sheen—almost seemed to glow. _Like starlight_ , Keith thought. Closer now than it’d ever been when they’d dreamed of this back on Earth, but still always just out of reach. Impossible to touch—if you tried, it’d slip right through your fingers.

Halfway across the field, the wolf snapped his jaws at the air, then vanished, reappearing by Keith’s side with a concerned whimper. “What is it?” he asked, stroking down the wolf’s muzzle.

“I think we finally found the blurfphoffls,” Shiro said. He held out his hand, palm up; a dark, fuzzy ball, the size of his fist, bumbled into it, then, with a flap of its iridescent, bat-shaped wings, carried on its way. The blossoms were transitioning back to pink, with a few stretching toward the sky, their petals flaming russet-orange in greeting as the bumble-bats dove toward them.

“They’re pollinators,” Keith said.

“Nocturnal, apparently. And like Coran said, harmless.”

It’d give them something to report back; maybe there’d be a type of honey for Hunk to harvest. He was always eager to find new flavors to experiment with. Keith gave the wolf a few more pats—he was still damp, but rolling through as much long grass as he could find had left him less soggy and wretched—and sat down next to Shiro to watch the evening unfold.

The air began to fill with a chirruping chorus—somewhere between the scrape of crickets’ wings and the reverberating buzz of cicadas. “Is that coming from them, too?”

“I don’t think so,” Shiro said. “I like it, whatever they are. It’s nice, being reminded that there’s still life thriving, all the way out here.” He was threading his fingers absently through the slender blades of grass that carpeted this section of the valley.

Keith imitated the motion; it was a soothing sensation—almost silky, rather than the rough-bristled vegetation he was used to. Their fingers brushed together; Shiro’s movements stilled, but he didn’t lift his hand away. When Keith pressed his palm flat to the ground, his heartbeat pulsing, Shiro hesitated for a moment, then did the same, their pinkies a hairsbreadth apart.

“It’s been hard to sort through my memories,” he said quietly. “To accept that everything that happened was really me, not something I can separate myself from. I remember...” He sighed, the corners of his eyes and mouth tight and sorrowful. “I remember everything, Keith. What I did to you. Not being able to stop myself from hurting you, no matter what I tried.”

“Shiro, it’s okay. Don’t blame yourself for something you couldn’t control,” Keith said. He nudged their hands closer together—just enough for Shiro to let out a soft breath, then slowly, carefully link their pinkies.

“Sometimes I don’t even recognize myself,” he confessed. “It’s like there’s a stranger in the mirror; Haggar’s version of me, waiting to take over again.”

“She won’t,” Keith said, fiercely, wishing he could fulfill this promise now, before they took another step. Once Voltron had its full power again, that’d be his first goal; nothing would stop them. “She’s never going to hurt you again, Shiro.”

“I know.” Shiro’s lips quirked into a soft smile, and his finger tightened around Keith’s. “I’ve had Pidge running so many tests and simulations that I think even she’s getting tired of the technology. I wanted to be sure.”

Keith swallowed down his protests. _Of course it’s you, Shiro. I’d know you anywhere. Why didn’t you tell me you were still worrying about this? Why would you keep it from me?_

A blurfphoffl bumped against the toe of Shiro’s boot, flapped in confusion, then folded its wings and settled in place. Shiro held still, until the wolf’s ears perked up, his head lifting with a deep growl, followed by a swift, unsuccessful pounce. The star-flowers burned red in a thin, looping trail across the meadow as the blurfphoffl dodged, eventually escaping into a cluster of shrubs.

Keith whistled; the wolf ignored him, snuffling after his lost prey. “We should get him out of here before he disturbs any more of the wildlife.”

Shiro accepted his hand, letting Keith pull him to his feet. He held on for a second, looking into Keith’s eyes. “I’m not all the way there yet. I’m still putting myself back together, Keith.”

There was something more behind the words: a plea, for Keith to understand. To be patient.

He rubbed his thumb in a gentle circle over the top of Shiro’s hand. The skin was smooth there, too, unmarred by the passage of time. “You don’t have to do that alone,” he said.

Shiro didn’t have to ask; Keith would wait forever if he had to.

***

Shiro wasn't in the hospital room when Keith woke.

The flash of disappointment accompanying that realization didn’t last long; during his failed attempt to sit upright, he lost the ability to think about anything other than the agonizing scrape of his dry throat and a pressure on his temples that felt as though his head would split apart if he moved another inch.

“Mom,” he croaked.

His mother was there within seconds, easing him back down, her soothing voice saying reassuring things that he didn’t quite catch.

Judging from the slant of shadows across his hospital bed the next time he woke, it must’ve been hours later. This time, Kolivan was there to help him sit, his mother stacking pillows behind him and stroking gently over his forehead.

“Everyone’s fine,” she said, before he could ask. “The other paladins all made it. Earth is safe. There’s nothing more for you to do right now. You’ve been in and out for the past few days; you ask the same questions every time.”

He opened his mouth, wincing unhappily at the raw burn in his throat.

“Shiro was here earlier,” she said. “You’ve seen him, but you seem to keep forgetting. The Garrison’s keeping him busy; he’ll be back soon.”

Keith sipped gratefully at the cup she held to his lips and closed his eyes again, slipping back under to the hum of Kolivan’s voice, mixing with his mother’s.

The third time went better. His body ached, but at a more manageable level. He could speak without feeling as though the words were rasping away oversensitive tissue.

“How are you feeling?” his mother asked.

“Okay,” he said. His voice came out huskier than usual, but he sounded more like himself. There was still something tight around his head, a band that he wanted to—

“Leave that in place,” his mother said. “The dressing’s keeping your wounds protected.”

“How long have I been out?”

“Four days.” His mother smiled; an odd response to that much lost time, until she added a fond, “Apparently Shiro was impossible to pry away on the first day.”

“He’s injured, too,” Keith said, pain stabbing along his temples when he scrunched his forehead unthinkingly. _Sendak_. But no, after that, there’d been Atlas—Shiro had done something extraordinary. He’d saved them.

“That was part of the argument that finally got him to leave your side. Plus, by the second day, Allura was well enough to open a wormhole, to bring us here. All he needed was a night of good sleep; he’s okay now, Keith. You all are.”

It was early afternoon; the light coming through the window was bright, unconcerned with Keith’s tumultuous thoughts or the anxiety still fizzing through him, his muscles tensing to keep fighting, to push harder. The Earth was...if he didn’t stop it in time...

“I need to see him,” Keith said, his voice grating desperately. There was no point in hiding it; his mother was well aware of his feelings. Kolivan had known essentially since the moment they’d met. “Where is he?”

His mother gave him an understanding look and activated the screen at the end of the room. She moved back to sit next to him, drawing his head to her shoulder so she could stroke his hair, over the thick bandage. “He’s speaking at the ceremony: a memorial for those who were lost, and a celebration of Earth joining the Coalition.”

Kolivan left his perch by the window, turning to the screen, his arms folded. “They waited until more of us could arrive; it gave them time to restore a percentage of Earth’s communications satellites so this could be broadcast as widely as possible.” He spoke with a familiar gruffness that Keith now found oddly comforting.

He’d missed this. He’d missed both of them: a hardwon family that he’d come so close to never finding.

The camera panned over the crowd, picking out some familiar faces, and masses that Keith didn’t know. Humans. Balmerans. Olkari. Taujeerians. Even a few Arusians—tiny, but as fiercely brave as when the paladins had first encountered them. The spasming in his muscles slowed; he’d believed her, of course, but he’d needed to see for himself.

The Lions were on display behind the dais; they were fine, too, then. He let out a long breath when the camera zoomed in on Shiro—his jaw set in a firm line, his voice steady.

Keith’s eyelids began to droop, exhaustion flooding in to fill the spaces left behind by the ebbing tension. When the speech was done, his mother continued sliding her fingers through his hair, filling him in on what she and Kolivan had accomplished. There were more Blades left than they’d feared; many had gone into hiding, afraid to respond to even coded communications.

“There are more out there still. We’ll find them; broadcasts like these will help.”

They’d been gathering new recruits, as well; Acxa had been one of the first. Krolia had high hopes for her.

“We’ve always believed that someday, the Blades wouldn’t need to be so secretive,” she said. “I think that day is finally approaching. There will always be a need for those like us, but soon we’ll be able to help in the open, rather than from the shadows.”

“He’s falling asleep,” she said, a little while later, in response to an inaudible rumble from Kolivan. Her voice was quiet, her thumb rubbing soothingly behind Keith’s ear. “Shiro will be sorry to have missed him again.”

***

The room was empty—dark, but with a faint glimmering of light outside that hinted at the morning’s approach. Keith sat up gingerly, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and searching for his clothes. The first drawer yielded nothing; the second held his paladin armor. He closed it after a moment of consideration, not ready to don that again. If he was around his team...but right now, he wasn’t the leader of Voltron, or a Blade. He was just Keith. And he wanted to wear something other than the Garrison’s open-backed hospital gown.

Searching the final drawer wasn’t as fruitful as he’d hoped; instead of his Garrison uniform, he found his old clothes. They must’ve still been in the Lion, retrieved as part of his belongings when they’d pulled him out of wherever he’d crashed.

There was a reason he’d never bothered to unpack them: the black t-shirt was wearable and his fingerless gloves slipped easily over his hands, but his jacket pulled tight at his shoulders, the seams threatening to rip, and he couldn’t get the pants past his thighs. They would’ve wound up several inches short, anyway.

He huffed in frustration and tossed the useless pieces back in. He hadn’t worn his civilian clothes in two years. He’d outgrown them.

He reopened the second drawer; like his Blade of Marmora suit, his paladin armor adjusted to its wearer’s body. It would always fit, no matter how much he changed physically. And, at this moment, the idea of it felt too stifling to bear.

Wrapping the gown around his waist, he tiptoed to the door and checked the hallway, pausing as a sense of déjà vu swept over him. The hospital wing looked like every other part of the Garrison. It even smelled the same—perhaps with a few more layers of cleaning products. But this time, he wasn’t trying to escape. At least not permanently.

Finding a spare pair of workable uniform pants and boots didn’t take as long as he’d feared; although it was early enough for the Garrison to be largely asleep, he hadn’t particularly wanted to chance the long walk back to his bunk. Fortunately, there was a nearby storage room with a lock that was easy to pick. He folded the gown and stuffed it into a bin, then stopped for a quick breather before planning out his next steps.

His head felt tender still; it was clear for the first time in days, but it wouldn’t take much for the throbbing pain to return. He’d be careful. He was just...tired of being trapped in that bed.

***

“Thought I might find you here.”

Shiro was grinning when Keith turned. Like in the old days, he’d unbuttoned the top of his Garrison uniform, exposing his collarbones and a triangle of white undershirt. He must’ve been feeling the need to breathe, too. To free himself, just for a little bit, from the weight of everyone’s expectations.

Or maybe Keith was projecting. All he knew was that he was unbearably glad to see Shiro.

With effort, he kept his voice even. “Feels like I’ve heard you say that before.”

“Took me longer this time,” Shiro said, moving to sit next to him, at the edge of the roof. “I checked the hangar first.”

In all honesty, Keith had considered it. “Head injury,” he said, tapping the bandage. “Flying solo—not the smartest idea.”

Shiro narrowed his eyes, probably considering whether to mention that it was a similarly bad idea to climb to the top of the Garrison with a head injury, without telling anyone where he’d gone. But if anyone could understand Keith’s actions, it’d be Shiro.

He shrugged in acknowledgment, letting Keith off the hook for the time being. “Our bikes weren’t there, anyway. A lot’s changed; they repurposed everything they could for weaponry and defense systems.”

The rest didn’t need to be spoken aloud. How many of their old haunts would be left?

They’d seen parts of the devastation when they’d first returned. Keith had flown over more in the Black Lion; although he’d been dealing with other important issues at the time, he’d catalogued some of the changes. Scorched earth, collapsed buildings, wide swaths of land that might take years to bloom again. An entire side of a cliff sheared away by a fallen Galra cruiser, leaving no record of the trail they’d used to race.

From Atlas, Shiro would’ve seen much of the same. Even the view from the rooftop was different; the distant cliffs, although too far to pick out clearly in the dim morning light, were jagged in places they shouldn’t have been. The Garrison itself was bristling with new construction: the weaponry Shiro had mentioned, additional bunkers to hold refugees, and a long, curved black wall illuminating the names of all the humans who’d been lost over the years that Voltron hadn’t answered their call.

Shiro was gazing at the wall, too. He turned—maybe feeling Keith’s eyes on him. “There are more flowers every time I go.”

Bouquets spanned the entire shining length, rainbows of color spilling along its base. In many cases, there wouldn't have been any bodies to recover. This was the only place loved ones could go to pay their respects.

“I ran into Adam’s parents there, two days ago,” Shiro added, quietly. “They hadn't heard the news; they'd been in a Galra camp. They rushed to the Garrison, expecting to find him.”

Keith had met Adam’s family once. They'd been effusive in their welcome, stopping Keith on his way out of the library and roping him into their dinner plans.

_You're Shiro’s friend! The hotshot pilot. Of course you have to join us, Keith._

Adam had two siblings, much younger. Twins: Sandy and Christine, Chris for short. One had wanted to be a doctor when she grew up. Another had worn glasses, like Adam. Keith couldn't remember now if they were the same twin. Or if Sandy had been a nickname. He'd spent most of the dinner awkwardly answering questions, hating how kind they all were, how well Shiro had fit in with them.

Guilt clawed at his stomach. “What about his sisters? Did they make it?”

“They're okay. Devastated about Adam, but physically, they're all okay. They have each other.” Shiro rubbed at a spot on his boot, his forehead furrowed. “I keep wondering if I should...”

Keith didn’t press him to finish the sentence; he waited until Shiro was ready to continue.

“Adam gave me flowers every anniversary,” he said, after a moment. “The same thing, every time. A dozen red roses, plus one for every year we'd been together.”

“And you...liked that?” Keith asked, testing the waters. That didn't fit with his picture of Shiro.

_Doesn't it make you sad?_

_What?_ Keith had asked, looking back to find that Shiro had paused outside a flower shop, gently touching a spray of white blossoms.

_The moment you pluck them, they start dying. You’re taking something beautiful before it's ready, then watching it waste away._

_It's supposed to be romantic,_ Keith had said. The florist had emerged from the shop by then, glaring at them; he hadn’t particularly cared, but when Shiro had noticed, he’d flashed his most charming smile and grabbed Keith's arm, tugging him along.

 _I just think you should let them live_ , Shiro had said when they were far enough away. _Especially here in the desert. They've fought so hard to make a place for themselves, on their terms. Why can't everyone just let them be?_

“No,” Shiro said. “But I never told him. It made him happy, and I didn't...I don't know. I didn't want to ruin anything. He was always so thoughtful—and generous. He wanted to celebrate everything. He had so many favorite holidays that I had to start writing them on a calendar so I wouldn't forget.”

“So what do you want to do?” Keith asked, meaning the flowers. He wasn't even sure where people had been getting bouquets. Some hothouses must have survived. That was a spark of hope, wasn’t it? If, after everything that had happened, the world could keep on turning, the way it always had.

“I want to fix everything I've broken,” Shiro said, then sighed. “Barring that, I don't know. Flowers aren’t going to bring him back. There's so much I wish I could change, Keith.”

That could mean a lot of things, some of which made Keith’s heart thud unsteadily. He breathed in. Out. _Be there for Shiro. That’s what matters._ “We did everything we could. What happened at the Garrison—to Adam—wasn’t your fault.”

Shiro’s mouth twisted. “Wasn’t it?” He curled the thick metal fingers of his right hand, the detached arm shifting seamlessly when he rolled his shoulder. “Sendak came to Earth because of me.”

“No,” Keith said. He knew where this was heading, and: “ _No_ , Shiro. The Galra were already on their way, hunting down the Blue Lion. The Blade of Marmora—my mom—threw them off track for a while, but they were coming back. If it hadn’t been for you, every single person in the Garrison would’ve probably been dead a long time ago, or under the Galra’s control. Think of all the planets Voltron freed. You—your warning—you saved everyone.”

Shiro looked as though he was about to object, but the tight lines around his eyes gradually eased. “If you hadn’t rescued me to begin with, none of that would be true.” He lifted both hands, human and softly-glowing Altean. “I think I still don’t have enough fingers to count the number of times you’ve saved me.”

Keith drew his knees up and pressed his chin into them. His head was beginning to ache again, a dull clench that matched the fist squeezing around his heart. The last thing he’d thought, when the strange Robeast had exploded, the blast knocking out the Black Lion’s power, sending him free-falling to Earth, was: _I didn’t get to say goodbye._

“Keith,” Shiro said, tipping immediately into the concern he’d withheld earlier. “You’re still not feeling well. You shouldn’t be up here.”

“I’m not going back to that room,” Keith said, tired but resolute. He hated doing nothing, being cut off from whatever actions the others were taking to prepare for future threats. He’d needed a break—a little time away from it all to gather his thoughts—but he was ready now. He’d meet whatever came next.

“Okay,” Shiro said, instead of arguing.

Keith tilted his head to the side, resting his cheek against his knee, to bring Shiro back into view. Of course Shiro wouldn’t fight him on this point. He knew, more than anyone, how to let others make decisions about their own physical limitations.

The sun was lifting over the ragged cliffs, a deep red-orange band stretching along the horizon, painting the edges of the clouds gold as it rose. It was a new day. A fresh start. Earth, as they’d known it, had been broken, but not irreparably; they could begin healing. He and Shiro had made it this far; what was there left to fear?

“How’d you know to look for me, anyway?” he asked, as the solar panels coating the roof began clicking into place.

“I went to check on you before starting my morning rounds. It’s the only time I can ever seem to consistently get away. There’s always someone to talk to, something to coordinate, and more Coalition forces arriving every day.” Shiro’s eyelashes fluttered, his mouth turning down. “For a second, when your bed was empty, I thought...”

It was easy for Keith to imagine the panic that would’ve swept through him if their positions had been reversed. It was a scenario he’d lived through, each time worse than the last. “I’m alright, Shiro,” he said, the pain along his temples beginning to subside, as though he could will it away, simply to ease that quaver in Shiro’s voice.

Shiro’s arm lifted toward him, as if of its own volition; they both stared at it, floating inches from his shoulder, before Shiro asked, “Is it okay if I—”

Keith didn’t know what he meant. The answer, with Shiro, would always be _yes_.

Shiro shifted closer, kneeling next to Keith; his arm moved with him, floating higher, the tips of his metal fingers brushing carefully against the thickly-wrapped bandage.

“You can take it off,” Keith said, lifting his head. “There’s just cuts and bruises underneath; it’s not holding me together.”

 _You are_ , he thought, as Shiro slipped his fingers underneath the bandage, loosening it slowly.

Gently, to give himself a bit more leverage, he cupped Keith’s face with his left hand, his warm palm covering him from cheek to chin, his grey eyes intent on the task. He unwound the cloth in slow, tender increments, carefully tilting Keith’s head as each loop came free.

“It looks okay,” he said, his breath a soft exhale that Keith could feel all the way to his toes.

Keith pressed his hands against his thighs, trying not to move, or to touch Shiro in return when he didn’t mean it like... Why was Shiro—what was he—

Disappointment sank through his veins when Shiro sat back, releasing Keith so he could meticulously rewind the bandage. He fumbled it partway through and started over.

“I thought that I’d lost you, Keith,” he said, as he smoothed the fabric, wrapping it in tight, even turns. “Not just this morning. When you fell. Even with Atlas, with all this new power I can somehow channel, I couldn’t do anything to catch you in time.”

Keith lined up his protests—Atlas’s systems had been knocked out by the battle; he hadn’t _expected_ Shiro to be able to do anything further—but Shiro shook his head, stopping him.

“No, let me—I’ve gotta get this out in one piece, I think.” He finished with the cloth and set it aside; it almost immediately began to unravel, but he didn't seem to notice. He paused, ducking his head a bit, perhaps regrouping his thoughts. The sun glinted off his hair, giving him an unearthly glow, as if he were the one emitting light.

 _You're beautiful_ , Keith thought, the words, as ever, trapped in his throat.

“I never thought I'd make it back to Earth. Not after the Galra took me, and not later, when Voltron needed me. I thought—I _knew_ I was going to die up there. And that was okay. I've done more with my life than most people could ever dream.”

“Shiro,” Keith said, agonized, but Shiro shook his head a second time, his bangs swaying softly.

He brushed them out of his eyes, absently—they were getting long again, distracting Keith with a constant, barely suppressible desire to touch—and continued. “You know how I was before I left. I had limited time, Keith, and I wanted to use it. I wanted to see and experience as much as I possibly could, while I still had a body that would let me. And not everyone agreed with my decisions.”

Adam. Admiral Sanda. Iverson. Only one left now, while Shiro continued to defy everyone's expectations—except for his own. And Keith’s.

“You asked me once, a long time ago, if I had any regrets about choosing Kerberos.”

“I remember,” Keith said. He remembered all of it: the shadows under Shiro's eyes; the mixture of heartbreak and frustration when he said Adam’s name; the joy that shone from him on the morning of the launch.

“Like I've said before, I had a lot of time to think on the way to Kerberos. More, during the year I was fighting in the arena, or waiting in the cells. And in the astral plane, when I finally _was_ dead, and I could see what it was like for the universe to carry on without me.” Shiro's eyes were shimmering—this time it wasn't a trick of the light. “Except for you, Keith.”

“Someone had to keep looking,” Keith said, fiercely. He'd never apologize for that.

Shiro righted the bandage, which had listed to its side, rolling along the roof as it unwound. “That's when I realized. Or maybe...I think I knew earlier, but I'd convinced myself...” When he let go, the cloth tipped over again, bent on following its own path. “I'm sorry. I'm not making sense. I've told you I'm not good at this.”

It was uncharacteristic for Shiro to struggle with his words this much; whatever he was trying to say was either painful to dig out, or something he wasn't sure Keith wanted to hear. Either way, Keith understood.

“I'm here, Shiro,” he said, pouring every last drop of his heart into the promise. “You can tell me anything.”

Shiro exhaled, a long, drawn-out breath that signaled he was gathering his strength. “Time is precious, Keith. Seeing Adam’s name on the wall really drove that home. I was so _angry_ with him when I left. So convinced that I was making the right decisions, and hurt that he would accuse me of being selfish, of not loving him enough. But he was right.”

“You wish you'd changed things,” Keith said, his heart tumbling in his chest. The bandage, which had made it to the edge of the roof, teetered precariously, a breeze away from falling. “You regret not making it work with Adam.”

“I definitely wish we’d left things on a better note.” Shiro’s arm drifted forward, retrieving the fluttering cloth. He set it against his boot, anchoring it. “I would’ve liked to have seen him happy—with someone else, in the kind of life he wanted to lead. He was a good person, Keith. He deserved that.”

Keith took a moment to sort through Shiro’s words. The past tense; the acceptance, underneath his sorrow. He’d been visiting Adam often, processing his grief—since the day they’d returned, and in all those long afternoons while Keith had been healing. “You talked to his parents; what did they say?”

“They said he’d—forgiven me, for leaving.” That made a slight line dig between Shiro’s eyebrows. Clearly, though he was willing to shoulder some of the blame for their relationship ending and for Adam’s fate, the Shiro who had left Earth with such certainty was still there, too. “He was going to start teaching more classes that year; that was the last they’d heard. He was doing well. I think he was happy.”

“I’m glad,” Keith said, meaning it.

Shiro fiddled with the collar of his jacket, glancing at the sun, which had risen high enough for the morning chill to have almost fully burned off. He was probably expected somewhere. Keith should go with him, rejoining the discussions now that he was back on his feet.

“I keep waiting for the right time,” Shiro said. “For everything to be perfect. A final battle. One more round of tests. But if I’ve learned anything, it’s how easy it is to miss an opportunity that’s...right in front of you. I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s important to me, Keith. _Who’s_ important to me—more valuable than anything else in my life.”

There was a pink tint high on his cheekbones, but his gaze was unwavering, his eyes fixed on Keith’s, wide and hopeful.

“What are you saying, Shiro?” Keith asked, his breath catching in his lungs. He and Shiro had a lot of shorthand: communication that could take place silently, with a few gestures. This was something he needed spelled out. If he’d read this incorrectly, if he was misunderstanding...

Shiro’s flush deepened, stretching along his cheeks and down to the hollow of his throat. “I’m trying to tell you I love you, Keith. I don't know if you meant it the same way, and if not, that's okay, it doesn't have to—”

The remaining words were muffled by Keith's mouth—or by Shiro’s winced inhale of pain, as Keith knocked their noses together, desperate to be closer to him.

“I don’t know what I’m doing, Shiro,” he gasped after a few clumsy, eager kisses that were probably wetter than they were supposed to be.

Shiro was laughing, though, radiating happiness that banished any lingering shreds of doubt. He cupped Keith’s face in his hand again, looking at him with so much affection—so much _love_ —that Keith could barely stand the heat of it.

“It’s mostly instinct, I think,” he said. “I’ve only ever—I think it’s different with everyone. We’ll just need—”

“Patience, I know,” Keith said, and Shiro laughed again.

“I was going to say practice.” He drew Keith toward him; Keith went, willingly, gripping at the lapels of Shiro’s jacket to bring their bodies as close together as he could manage.

This kiss was gentler, an unhurried exploration that Keith would’ve gladly spent the rest of his life mapping. When Shiro eventually pulled back to catch his breath, he didn’t go far; he rested his forehead against Keith’s, his mouth still curved into a smile.

“We should take it slowly,” he said quietly. “Talk through this more. There’s so much going on; you’re still hurt, Keith.”

“There’ll always be something,” Keith said. Free to follow his urges now, he nipped lightly at the edge of Shiro’s jaw; Shiro huffed in surprise, but let Keith coax his mouth back open for a few more blissful moments.

“Do you think everyone will be able to tell?” Shiro murmured when they finally parted. He buttoned the collar of his jacket, gently touched Keith’s face once more, and smiled when Keith slid his fingers into his hair, under the pretext of smoothing it back into place.

“We’ve been gone long enough that there’ll probably be questions. I think we can manage some insurrection in the ranks.” When they stood, Keith took his hand, lifting it to brush his lips over Shiro’s metal knuckles—as sensitive as the rest of him, judging from the way that made his eyelashes flutter. “You ready, Captain?”

“Yes, sir,” Shiro said, looking so pleased with himself that Keith had to draw his face down for another kiss.

The universe was calling them; they had endless responsibilities waiting, with unimaginable dangers lurking on the horizon.

It could wait, just a tick longer.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me [on tumblr](http://paintedrecs.tumblr.com/), twitter under the same name, or running my [appreciateshiro blog](http://appreciateshiro.tumblr.com/). 
> 
> And many, many thanks to [Inkforwords](http://inkforwordsart.tumblr.com/), an amazing artist and friend who encouraged this fic every step of the way, motivated me to finish, and volunteered to beta.


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